


redemption by invitation only

by ohroses



Series: tales of the dark and other lore-driven, speculative stories [1]
Category: Dark Souls (Video Games), Dark Souls I, Dark Souls III
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Betrayal, Family Dynamics, Gen, Protective Siblings, Roses, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:55:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23862658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohroses/pseuds/ohroses
Summary: In which the Nameless King is kidnapped and rudely asked to do something about the end of the world.
Relationships: Lord Gwyn's Firstborn & Dragon Slayer Ornstein, Lord Gwyn's Firstborn & Lord Gwyn, Relationships to be added, The Nameless King & Dark Sun Gwyndolin, The Nameless King & Dragon Slayer Ornstein, The Nameless King & Filianore, The Nameless King & Gwynevere, The Nameless King & Lord Gwyn
Series: tales of the dark and other lore-driven, speculative stories [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1724569
Comments: 34
Kudos: 58





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will take place during DS1, and before DS3, and it will include the space between. As of now, I have most of it written or planned out. It'll be a journey for me, and I'm determined to communicate my GWYN KID VISION and weird lore ideas to the world*.
> 
> *three people

* * *

**Golden Anor Londo; His Father's Tomb.**

* * *

The tomb was cold and desolate. This was absolutely a product of the Dark Sun’s ambitious illusions, for despite what the old king would have liked people to believe, he had no sway over the sun itself.

Illusion though it was, grief wove itself into the tomb like a breathing soul, like it did throughout the darkened, hollow city. The walls were plain stone, and the floors were bare marble, unpolished, and the corridor was empty save one figure comfortably seated at the long way’s end. By the tomb itself, there was a single burst of color, gold and white, against the dark, drab stone.

He didn’t dare draw attention to himself yet, but he knew there was no avoiding this. So, he stepped through, and after a moment of heavy and drawn out silence, where neither of the figures acknowledged the other, he began to walk down the stone hall.

For at the end of that cold, dark, stone corridor, still as cold and as morbidly empty as it had been before he’d noticed the illusions, there sat Gwyndolin, the Dark Sun. They must have been tired, for their usual masks and disguises were cast off. The chair was a simple one, clearly wood, and it seemed out of place here, in the stone halls of the Lord of Sunlight’s great castle, even more so in his tomb.

Gwyndolin looked like themselves; they looked exactly how he remembered them. Thin, angular, and sharp, with a mouth that tended towards a sneer more often than a smile, and towards a sneer more often than a frown. The soft kindness was gone, but so was the damning darkness, the terrible might, that they tried to conjure around the humans that so needed to be frightened into respect and worshipful awe. They had not removed the cowl yet, no matter how tired they seemed, and so he felt, still, a distance like an ocean between them.

But still, what was before him was not a monster, nor a goddess, but a familiar sight.

“Tell me that’s you, brother,” Gwyndolin said with a sigh, in a voice that sounded like he had pulled it right out of a memory. “I don’t think I can handle Gwynevere right now. Gwynevere, if that is you, kindly leave me to my thoughts for a moment longer, dear.” The exhaustion in their voice pierced the dark and the cold and it struck him deep in his chest.

He braced himself and stood firm against the obvious game Gwyndolin was playing. Should he step forward? Should he leave? “It is as you assume,” he ventured finally, while his mind searched through the possible routes for escape. But then he paused as the full import of the words landed on him. “I did not think you would want to see me.”

“I do not. Not particularly. But I’m glad to see you, which should tell you how much I do not want to see Gwynevere.”

Anar took another few steps, his stride carrying him far and closer to his beloved but long distant childhood nemesis and comrade. “What crime has Gwynevere committed to warrant more blame than I?”

“She has been weeping.”

“Ah,” he winced. “I thought she— Well, I suppose she did not have the best control of us, to my memory.”

“You can just say that you are surprised that she would weep, since you do not believe him worth weeping over.”

“If there was any one of us who would bear his death with silence and resolve, I thought it would be her,” he said, refusing to rise to the bait.

“You speak as though we do not know grief,” Gwyndolin muttered. “When you ran there were no curtains left unscorched anywhere in the palace. She nearly turned golden Anor Londo black.”

“I did not run,” he snapped, ignoring the magnitude of knowledge at the edge of what Gwyndolin was saying. This was their wont, to hide the truth and the dark on the edges of lies and light. They were still an adept storyteller; time had not changed that. Apparently, grief had not changed that either. “In any case,” he continued, “I am here to do my duty as his son and firstborn. You may give me a moment alone now.”

“Thank you for granting to me your divine permission, fallen one,” Gwyndolin said with a delicate sneer, just as familiar as their dry wit, “but I do not plan to vacate my seat.”

“You have your duties elsewhere, I am sure.”

“You sound like him.” Gwyndolin threw him a smile that was all knives, in the usual way. “You probably hate to hear that.”

“More than anything,” he replied coldly, knowing it was what they wanted to hear. The silence between them stretched on, and it became clear with time that just as Anar would not leave, Gwyndolin would not rise from their place by the tomb, nor leave the chamber to him alone. “I’m glad it’s you, at least,” Anar said, giving up and approaching the tomb regardless of its current sentinel. “If it were any of the others I would have left immediately.”

“I can see you mean that. I’m sure in your vivid imaginations of this moment, Gwynevere would yell at you, Filianore would weep on you, and I would calmly hear you out; an ancient mediator.” Gwyndolin said all this with an odd note of bitterness in their voice, but before Anar could ponder it, it was gone. “You have been gone a long time. Even your knights are gone. All gone, save one. Can you guess who stayed?”

Anar knew which one had stayed, against all common sense, and he did not care to mention that he knew. He did not respond to the attack. “Do not dare tell me that Filianore has hardened her heart,” he said insteady, lightly, “or that dear Gwynevere has given up yelling,” he laughed, and it was empty even to him. “She was so proficient.”

“Never.” Gwyndolin stood, finally, and faced him, and their face was so much sharper and colder than it had been in his memories. “But I have long since given up the role of mediator.”

Faster than he could react, a great pain wound about Anar’s middle and he was thrown back onto the cold floor, unable to even move his hands to brace himself. He hated this trick of Gwyndolin’s, and he hated that he always, always fell for it. He thrashed a little, mostly for show, because he knew better than anyone how tight those bindings could be wound about a person. Many a human had met their end within these. He had seen it.

It was his nature to anticipate trickery and deceit, but he could never find it in Gwyndolin, not even when he looked for it. He would sense it, at the edges of things, but it was this damned heart of his— It got in the way. Even after all these centuries, he trusted his sibling. He loved them and wanted to believe nothing but good in them. Like a fool. He had seen the monster before, but he always forgot it once it bled out of sight.

“Goddess, really?” 

“You’ve become a blasphemer, too?” Gwyndolin asked mildly, their hands glowing with the strength of the binding they cast. “I know you do not mean me, and you definitely cannot mean Gwynevere. You know better than that.”

“You accuse me of much,” he spat, “for someone who would need not look farther than their own nose for blasphemy.” 

“Oh, and here you thought meeting me instead of the others would mean less bloodshed.” Gwyndolin's smirk was colder than memory. “How do you feel?”

“Like perhaps some more bloodshed would be nice,” he muttered. “There’s no point in this, Gwyndolin. He’s dead now. Just let it go. Let me pay my respects and then let me leave. I won’t speak to anyone; I had no plans to.” 

Gwyndolin turned to the coffin itself and picked up a small object. It was his own emblem, and it shone in the moonlight as Gwyndolin turned back to him. “You were here,” they replied coldly, “during the deliberations, before he left for the Witch and her den of horrors. Disguised, I assume? You left this, however you snuck in. You left it here. Like you knew. And who can know who you met during that time? Who you spoke to?”

He had not been here since he had been cast out, but he did not say that. But he had been summoned elsewhere, and he’d honored the summons despite the war, despite the battles, and despite the betrayal. His father had asked it of him, and nameless though Anar was to the Lord of Sunlight after his betrayal, he found that he couldn’t deny his father. He had no desire to revisit those feelings now, nor that memory of that final meeting in the wilds, in this situation, with his sibling towering over him and bindings about him.

“Damn,” he said instead, a lie on his lips. “I had hoped I’d lost it over the sea. It’s a long journey, and the seas are vaster than you know.” 

“Don’t try and distract me with the sea,” Gwyndolin hissed. “Who did you meet? Why did you come to this tomb?”

Anar smiled, leaning back and dropping his head against the cold, awful floor. “You were always so obsessed with it,” he said, ignoring the questions.

“I said _do not_ try and distract me,” they snapped. “How could you come back, only to leave? Did you even try to fix anything? Did you bother to speak to him? Did you come to this place, before he was even cold in his grave?”

Anar didn’t answer, for there was nowhere to begin in the sea of nonsense Gwyndolin had buried the truth in. Apparently giving up on any sort of an answer to their questions, Gwyndolin put the emblem away again. “You can’t escape those bindings without burning out your soul. Stay put and behave yourself. I am going to get Gwynevere.”

“Urgh,” Anar groaned. “Couldn’t you just behead me now? Wouldn’t you love to start your rule with my head on a pike?”

“No,” Gwyndolin said, with something bitter and new, something that disappeared when they spoke again. “What sort of end to the Nameless King would that be? You shall have to face our sister. And Father, too.”

“Father is dead!” Anar thrashed against the bindings and was met with more immediately.

“I said not to do that, fool.” Gwyndolin waved a hand and more bindings descended on him. “In any case, that’s what we wanted you to think, you see. He’s not dead, or at least not yet. I have been wasting days and nights in this empty tomb. Waiting for you.”

Anar could have raged, he could have broken the bindings, even. He had a storm inside him, after all. Summoning it would not be any trouble. But Gwyndolin was strong, and he knew nothing about what sorts of other traps were laid around him, throughout Anor Londo. “So, you announced that the Lord of Sunlight, the King of Lordran, was dead, hoping it’d get back to me? And that I’d somehow come? You had no reason to believe that.”

“I knew it would get back to you.” They held up that damned emblem again, the cursed thing he’d left behind in his father’s hands in a last effort to show his father that despite his sins, despite his crimes— that he was loved. By a son that despised his work but loved him all the same. “You are a clannish sort. I knew you’d come when I saw that you left this.” Anar ignored it; Gwyndolin didn’t understand what it was, nor what it meant, they did not even know how it came to be here. They were working with a story they barely understood, as usual, but he couldn’t correct them.

He couldn’t give his sibling the real story, not yet, so he found rage inside him and pulled at it, desperate to feel the old hatred that had comforted him so well across the sea. “Damn you and damn your stories,” Anar said, throwing his head back against the floor in frustration when he could not move his hands an inch in spite of his best efforts.

“It was you who taught me their power, Brother,” Gwyndolin laughed, disappearing from his line of sight, their laughter just as familiar as their taunts.

“Snake!” he shouted after them, to pretend at being defeated, and Gwyndolin only laughed more. Finally, he was left alone.

At least he knew the executioner’s block did not await him. Though he might have guessed that when his father did not make any attempt on his life before, even when he was at his most angry. He never expected his father to react to his only son’s betrayal with anything less than utter annihilation, and yet he had survived that clash. It was, for a long time, the only bit of hope that ruined his freedom. This small proof that perhaps, maybe, the Lord Gwyn cared still.

He shut his eyes and gave up the fight, grinding his teeth in the silence. It was not the bindings that enraged him, it was that arrogance of them all, of Gwyndolin’s in particular, to pry where they were not wanted and spin stories from nothing. The moment a story spun itself in Gwyndolin’s mind it became as close to truth as a liar could get. They’d never learn, and they’d never change. Nothing changed; no matter what happened to him, no one would—

It was only then, in the dark of his own anger, that he remembered what Gwyndolin had said. _You speak as though we do not know grief._ He opened his eyes when the memory began to grow inside him, and he gazed at the vaulted ceilings above his head, where even the dim lamplight could not illuminate the figures gazing down at him in stony silence.

 _She nearly turned golden Anor Londo black_. Gwynevere had lost control – He hadn’t left, nor run, nothing so mild as leaving and nothing so quiet as running away. He had been driven out in front of their eyes, and no one had said a word when his father had commanded him to never return, to forget his name, to denounce his birthright and his family. None of them had lifted a hand to help, nor to stand by his side. He did not expect it of them, but at the same time—

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Damn it.”

He had wanted it. At the very least, he could stop lying to himself. His rage was grief, and pain, and he had only ever wanted one of them to fight for him.


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

**Golden Anor Londo; His Father**

* * *

The story Gwyndolin had spun around the emblem was probably a natural one.

The Firstborn’s emblem in his father's empty tomb, found during its vacancy, the worst of signs of the future mixed with the worst of the relics of the past; Gwyndolin had used the evidence as they always did, and they had spun a tale. Their father’s fate, his son’s forbidden emblem, there could have only been one explanation.

But Gwyndolin was wrong.

He’d seen his father once after the worst had happened. Once, and only once, before “I never want to see you again” went into full, irrevocable effect.

They had met in secret, for never again could the great Lord of Sunlight be seen with the traitorous son who left him for the ancient dragons. They met in the wilds, and there the Lord Gwyn asked him if he’d lend his strength, under a certain guise, against the chaos that the Witch of Izalith had summoned forth. Anar had laughed in his face, and his father had grabbed him and yelled at him to do his duty, roaring and booming like the thunder that accompanied lightning.

And Anar had gestured to his father’s armor and his crown. “All that you are is because I did my duty,” he had laughed, and quietly he wondered why he had bothered to come, why he had been so weak in the face of his father’s request to see him, even after everything. He cursed himself for running back the moment a hand beckoned towards him, and he swore then and there that never again would he return, not for anything. It would be a lie.

His father had stared back at him, aghast, and at that Anar garnered what remained of his rage and threw it against his sorrow. “You would have faded into nothing without me,” he hissed, gripping his father’s wrists and preparing to throw him off. He was stronger than the king, and he always would be.

But Gwyn’s face had changed from shock to regret, and still he held tightly to his son’s shoulders. Anar watched him, for a long time it seemed, before he no longer could. He’d leave, again, but before he did— His father would probably die there, in that bed of hell. He didn’t care enough to stop it, not for anything. He remembered the final days in Anor Londo, the final blow, and the curse. All this, and yet he cared enough to regret that what once was had fallen apart.

This was the way it was meant to be, and his father had only delayed what nature demanded of him. The time for fire had ended, and here was proof. His father was spent, sad, and desperate. Desperate enough to ask for the help of a son he had disowned and discarded. So, he took his father’s hand, and his father let him take it, and he pressed the emblem into his father’s palm.

It was a simple medal. An emblem, just as Gwyndolin knew it to be, and it would allow him to know of the one who held it, to watch over them after a fashion. His father could do with it what he willed, but the gift was given freely. He left the door open behind him, and whatever followed would follow.

Anar left, after a moment of waiting, but he knew that his father had clung to him at the end. Barely noticeably. He had simply held onto his shoulder long after Anar had begun to pull away.

“Sen!” a voice had called after him, echoing in the darkness as the might of his drake tested the winds with its wings, but it had been a quickly fading call, and it was easily ignored. It was lost in the winds, as he would tell himself later.

He didn’t answer to that name anymore, after all.

And now, all these years later, it was clear that his father had kept the emblem, and had even brought it back here, to this tomb. As if he had known that Gwyndolin—

The realization was obvious once he thought to make the connection, with the pieces of the story that Gwyndolin lacked. It was likely he had left it for Gwyndolin to find, to recognize, and to plot around. The only one who could outmaneuver Gwyndolin was always Father, after all.

Anar stared up at the figures above his head and wished someone was there to be offended by the roll of his eyes. Even regret was a weapon in his father’s arsenal. Even the loneliness his traitorous son felt, worlds away, was a tool to be used, a pawn to be positioned. Was that not what lay behind the emblem, the tomb, and Gwyndolin’s deceit?

Was that not the reason he first considered leaving? Was that not what weighed on his mind when he turned to the dragons and fought for a place by their sides?

No, Gwyndolin did not know anything. 

But those thoughts would remain fruitless boughs over his neck, because the unmistakable scent of burning, liquid flame took over his senses. Anar twisted, arching his back as far as he could to see the figure now in the doorway.

Ah, Gwynevere. The revered Princess of Sunlight herself. The balm against burns, the sweet succor of faith itself, she was all that and more, according to her faithful. Naturally, these were all baseless and outrageous lies. “Hello, harpy,” he said with a grin, trying for flippancy and missing completely. For in spite of his levity, he still saw. And what he saw hurt him, despite his best efforts to arm himself against it.

Gwynevere looked monstrous, almost like she had when Father first threw a suitor at her without warning, when they had gathered in her chambers and tried to put the flames out while she wept and raged.

She had probably been in decline for some time, for her face was stained with the trails of her molten tears and her complexion was mottled with old burn marks. The sight of them was familiar, but they would not last long. They had faded in time for that suitor’s great banquet, he remembered, and had disappeared completely when she tossed him out on his face before the moon rose that same night. But the burns she had left on the upholstery, the servants, and the castle had lasted for much longer. 

It was clearer now than it had been before: Gwynevere looked like their father now, he decided. She so often looked beautiful, serene, and calm. It was how she was trained to look, after all. She was begotten to ease the pain of war, to herald plenty and peace for his father’s age of fire. But now, standing over him and raining fire on his face, she looked as angular, harsh, and cold as Gwyn, Lord of Sunlight. It did not suit her, not exactly, but it looked more honest than the mask she often wore for the people.

“Why so many tears? Gwyndolin tells me that Father still lives.”

“You _idiot!”_ Her voice was loud enough to shake the stone of the walls and the floor, and she was there, suddenly, like a storm cloud over his head. He watched her mildly from his position on the floor. It was best to let Gwynevere burn it all out as much as she needed, no matter how painful it would be for any bystanders. He watched her in a detached, patient way, but then her face fell into true pain, untouched by rage. “I hate you _,”_ she sobbed. He felt his muscles seize in spite of himself. He hated that habit of hers. The way she turned, without warning, from flame to flood.

“Gwynevere, I am trying to be civil— “ 

She switched again, the rage returning in full force. “Oh, civil is what you call sneaking into your ancestral home? Civil is what you call betraying your own? Leaving your family behind for SNAKES? —Sorry, Gwyndie.” 

“It’s fine,” Gwyndolin sighed, unfazed by her sudden calm. “Carry on.” 

But Anar cut in before Gwynevere could puff up her chest and roar some more. “I meant to say,” he said, “that I fail to see why you’ve elected to kidnap me, given that everything would go so much more smoothly if you’d just go back to ignoring my existence for the next five hundred years. You’ve been doing a good job of it so far. Why lie about Father's death?”

“ _You’re_ the one who doesn’t see past his own nose! And we didn't lie.”

"Gwyndolin said as much," Anar argued. 

"No," Gwyndolin said. "I said Father was not quite dead. There is a difference."

"You are really, very affected by this, aren't you?"

"Don't speak to Gwyndolin that way," Gwynevere snapped, her temper flaring up again, where it had been simmering just a moment before. "You don't know the half of what they've had to do, you ungrateful beast." Anar spared her a rude glance, just to let her know exactly what he thought of those tactics.

“Speak as much nonsense as you please,” he said, “there remains no reason for me to be here. I assume you want to truss me up and make a big to-do about beheading me. I won't make it easy on you.”

“You _know_ we’d just do it if we wanted to,” Gwyndolin muttered. "No ceremony, no feast."

“No, you’d want a big ceremony out of it.”

Gwyndolin pursed their lips before they threw up their hands. “Fine,” they said, in an over the top show of giving up. “Yes. I’ve thought about it. But it wouldn’t help us any, it’d just prove your banishment and all our attempts to wipe you out were not enough.”

“They’ve been enough. No one remembers my name, not anymore. I daresay even if someone saw me in the halls, they’d think me a wandering warrior. Is there anyone yet here who can recall me?”

“You know perfectly well that your dragon slayer remains,” Gwynevere sniffed. She was right, but he liked the confirmation. “In any case, I think we can all safely determine that you are not to be beheaded.”

“I am not so sure, considering that I am the one who might be beheaded.”

“It’s a fair concern,” Gwyndolin conceded. “What shall we do to prove that it is unfounded?”

“You cannot prove that it is unfounded, as I have just shown you how founded it is.”

“Very well,” Gwynevere sighed, “we shall have to prove that the basis on which it is founded is false.”

Anar rolled his eyes. “It is good to know your time with Father hasn’t reduced you both to grunting and beating each other over the head with clubs."

“Oh, there’s a fair amount of that around here,” Gwyndolin said with a smirk that was familiar, more familiar than their sneers and their masks. “Anor Londo has become quite barbaric in your absence.” The bindings about him fell away as they spoke. He moved his hands to test the limits of his new freedom, and when he found himself without coursing, burning pain, he pushed himself up and stood.

“It was quite barbaric in my presence,” he said. “What changed?”

“Can we stop this?” Gwynevere crossed her arms and glared at him. “I do not like pretending that everything is well and ordinary. It is not. I wish to slap him, Gwyndolin. Let me.”

“You swore not to, remember?”

“I have done away with promises and oaths before.”

Anar took a step back, his falsely blithe demeanor falling away in the face of truth again. He so wanted to keep pretending; he could see the appeal Gwyndolin found in these sorts of games. It was easier than being an enemy, and it was easier than this pain, but it was clear that it would be impossible to play along with them. “I see that I am indeed here, in some capacity, to be punished.”

“Yes,” Gwyndolin sighed, and he detected, for the first time, some truth in their words. “But not how you are thinking. I know you're stalling, but there's no way we are going to let you leave. We're prepared to fight to keep you here, and I should hate to have to roll you through the halls of your old home.”

“As if you could defeat me without your tricks,” he muttered, but he followed when they turned and left, and he ignored Gwynevere’s stabbing glares as they went.

Anor Londo was much the way he left it. There were burn marks sporadically littering the walls, but he knew they would not last long. They would be scrubbed out, polished out, and painted over soon. He did not think they were all Gwynevere’s doing, either. Some were multiple, small, and lower down. Like many small mouths expelling flame. He chuckled at the reminder of Gwyndolin’s little fiends. They resembled the drakes suspiciously, after all.

Gwyndolin turned back to see him smiling, and they sent him a questioning look at which Anar could not help but smirk. The glare he received was worth the trouble. Let Gwyndolin think he knew something they did not. It always drove them mad.

They followed the hall to a familiar chamber some floors higher than the tomb had been, and Gwynevere stopped in front of a grand door that towered higher even than her head, and she was the tallest of them. She seemed unable to push the door open, so long did she stand before it. Gwyndolin finally put a hand on her shoulder and gently moved her aside. They pushed the door open themselves and entered. Anar followed, but Gwynevere lingered behind, her face clearly distressed.

Anar lingered too, watching her, before something caught his eye. It was an old, bent figure by a large window. An old man, in simple robes, with a strange look about his skin, seated in a chair not unlike the one Gwyndolin had been seated in before, in the tomb. His skin was odd… He looked as though he was alight somehow.

Anar approached the figure slowly, something drawing him forward. The man’s hand was outstretched on his lap, open and palm up, as if awaiting something. Gwyndolin approached and dropped something into his hand, taking it in their own and closing his fingers over the item. Anar realized what it was too late, he was too close now, and when the man looked up their eyes met.

“Father." The gasp was not something he could hold back, and he did not think he would have been able to hide it, even if he had known what he would see. The man only stared back for a while, and then looked down into his lap where his hand was closed about his son’s emblem.

“This is what has happened,” Gwyndolin said. They sounded close to tears, but there was a quiet rage in them too. Anar found that he could not pay them any real attention, however, for his eyes lingered on his broken father. He felt like all the grief he’d felt before this was nothing, like it was all in preparation for this. The rage, the regret, the anger--- all of it fell away, and then resurged with the grief as it came. There was no escaping it now, it was all there at the forefront of his thoughts, all over his mind, and it was leaking from his eyes.

Goddess, he was doing it now, too. There were hissing sounds as his tears hit the carpet, but he wiped them away before turning to Gwyndolin and Gwynevere. “How did this happen? Was it truly the Witch?”

“The Witch was gone long before he came to that place,” Gwyndolin said. “No, this is his own doing. He has done something… Something you will hate to hear.”

“There is nothing about this that I do not hate; tell me what has happened.”

“He’s linked the flame. He’s linked it with his soul and given us each a piece of it.”

“Did he lose his mind? Did he succumb to madness, like I told him he would?”

“Nothing so aggrandizing as that,” Gwynevere said, but her voice was also like Gwyndolin’s. Like death. Anar watched her for a while, glad to rest his heart from looking at the shadow that was once his father. “We think this has… done to him what happens to humans,” she said, dodging the truth as she often did when confronted with it.

“Fitting; I always told him there was a price to pay for messing about with the Dark’s children."

“I do not understand your pity for the humans.”

“We might be humans, of a sort,” he said.

“Don’t blaspheme, you’ll put me off my dinner,” Gwynevere said, and turned to leave. “I shall need to get something together for this occasion.”

“For what?”

“For your reinstatement as a god,” Gwyndolin sighed. “She’s joking. There will be no feasts. As you see, Lordran is in no state to give them. But she's right. Father has left you a portion of his Lord’s Soul, too.”

“You know as well as I do that to do that is impossible,” Anar hissed. “I no longer exist here. I don't plan to, either”

Gwynevere rolled her eyes. “Yes, that was the other half of the joke, dear. The first was that we need to depend on _you_ to do what is right by the kingdom.”

"You want me to do right by the kingdom? Tell me what the kingdom has done right, first. Tell me one thing I owe this place."

Gwynevere froze at the door. “I have been patient with your idiocy thus far,” she said, in a whisper that he knew meant she was desperately stopping herself from shouting, “but I cannot allow it to continue. Will you continue to delude yourself the way we have deluded the humans? Do you honestly—Do you _truly_ believe that when we wiped you out in the books and tore down the statues, that we forgot you? That you had given up all duty, all responsibility, all _purpose?”_

“Forgive me,” Anar spat, “for following the logical conclusion from your actions. You still haven't provided a reason.”

“We didn’t _want_ this,” Gwynevere raged. “We didn’t want _any_ of this! Stop punishing us!”

"And yet you sit here, in your golden towers, and refuse _none of it."_

"Is this about the humans? Is this about the cycle? Or is it about _you?"_

Gwyndolin leapt between them as Gwynevere began to let off a distinct heat, a warmth like fire, and they shushed Gwynevere with fear, but Gwynevere’s last cry had had no effect on their father. Anar shrugged Gwyndolin off when they tried to push him back, and he went to face Gwynevere like she so obviously wanted him to, his face growing uncomfortably warm in her rage. “Give me one reason to stay,” he demanded. “Where have you been? Where were you when father banished me? When he struck me? When he erased me from everything here? Where have you been since?”

“How dare you!” Gwynevere was closer than ever now, and the heat radiated off of her like a personal insult. “You betrayed us! You horrible— We should have mattered more than those _dragons!”_

“That’s enough,” Gwyndolin snarled, pushing themselves between their siblings again. “Both of you shut up. If we go on casting blame like this, no one will be able to do anything. We’re in this together. The three of us.”

The haze of anger cleared at the implied redaction of his littlest sister, and Anar looked away from Gwynevere’s twisted, angry face to see Gwyndolin already at the door.

“What about Filianore?” he asked. “Where is she? Has she received a portion of the Lord’s soul?” His heart beat faster at the prospect of seeing his littlest sister again, and he admitted to himself that while rage had dulled the pain of losing Gwynevere, Father, and Gwyndolin, it had never eased the ache of never seeing Filianore again.

“No,” Gwyndolin said, a strange depth to their tone.

“What do you mean?” he asked again. 

“Father has left three portions of the Soul for us; the rest he has divided amongst the greater beings in Lordran. Filianore was not counted among them.”

“Last I heard, she was overseeing the Ringed City,” Anar said. "Shouldn't that make her a better candidate than an exiled, nameless son?"

"Normally," Gwynevere said. "Yes. But the flame fades even with Father's sacrifice, Gwyndolin senses it, and we can waste no time."

“Speak plainly, what did he do? Why three alone? Why not Filianore?” He did not know what it was, exactly, about them and their responses that caused him concern, but he knew something was not right. Father would have given Filianore the world; his soul was a relatively smaller thing to offer, since he had even offered some power of the flame to vassals of no real importance, before. "Gwyndolin," he said, not quite pleading, but not without meaning.

“There is a long story to tell you. I don’t know how to do it.” Gwyndolin looked to Gwynevere for help, but none came. “It’s painful to tell,” Gwyndolin continued, “and it requires… honesty that we do not know how to have.”

“That’s the most honesty I’ve heard out of you in several centuries so far; I would venture to say that you are doing well.”

“You haven’t heard from me in several centuries.”

Anar shrugged and gestured to the door. “I know that you’re a liar. But perhaps I’m a fool, for I still ask you questions. I ask again: why isn’t it Filianore, here, instead of me?”

Gwyndolin watched him with something strange in their eyes, and after a moment Anar realized that his sibling was bitter. There was a sullen gleam there, one he hadn’t seen in a long, long time. “Let us go.” He knew now more than ever to distrust them, but something more important than Gwyndolin's games pushed him forward and out the door. He followed Gwyndolin and Gwynevere as they left, their husk of a father silent behind the shutting door, and thought only of Filianore.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternate subtitle was: Golden Anor Londo; Problematic.

* * *

**Golden Anor Londo; Lies**

* * *

They took him to one of the ancient throne rooms, the ones from before his departure. It was obvious that things had begun to decline around the time he had left; for he knew that if they could have done it, then every trace of him would have been wiped away. But this was not the case. He could see a bare pedestal where his place in the divine sequence should be, unoccupied and obvious, in what should have been a clear sign to him that things had declined sharply. But that wasn’t the truth either.

He had seen the statues of Ornstein, alongside that pathetic executioner, Smough. He’d seen those statues displayed in the wings of the palace’s guard houses. Those had not been there before, for before there had been no reason to try and humiliate Ornstein by placing him alongside, and his mind rebelled at the thought, _Smough._ An executioner, not a warrior; the meaning was clear, but the clues were muddied.

It was strange that they had never rid the place of the marks of his presence, that they had invested time in putting Ornstein in such a low place, even erecting statues of him to prove his new stature. It was strange that although they’d wiped him out of history, and forbid his very name from their halls, he was still there. His presence was clear. His emblems, and they were his, were still in use throughout Lordran. Sometimes he could sense them in use, medals for the greatest of warriors. Unbroken, like the one he’d given his father; even the magic in the ones he still had was still strong, though they had tried to cut everything else of his off from the flames. His plans were still in place, and in every guard’s stance and every knight’s blade, he was there. His pedestals were still standing, though empty.

The throne room was empty but for them, in any case. And he knew Gwyndolin saw him notice the pedestal, because when he met their eyes, they gave him a knowing look. He did not know what to make of it, so he did not acknowledge it. Glancing around, he saw no evidence of Filianore. Nowhere were her beloved little plants, and nowhere was she.

“So she is in the Ringed City. Why do you not speak plainly?”

“She is not here,” Gwyndolin confirmed, and looked to Gwynevere again, but he should not have bothered, because just as she did before, Gwynevere ignored his silent request for help. She pursed her lips and looked away, crossing her arms and glaring at nothing.

Anar felt the strange stirrings in his gut that always preceded disaster. “Yes?” he asked again, this time letting the veil he kept over his nature drop. He rarely did this with them, not even at the end, but he felt perhaps they needed some prompting. Gwynevere noticeably tensed even further, shifting her gaze to him and then to Gwyndolin in clear worry.

Gwyndolin raised their hands in a clear warning, palms outstretched and glowing. On anyone else, it would be surrender. It was no such thing. “I was worried this would happen. Do not make me bind you.”

“I won’t be so compliant this time,” Anar said coolly. “I see now that I cannot trust either of you. Why do you speak of Filianore like I might see her, and then fail to bring her forth? Why don’t you leave her the rightful portion of Father’s soul? Why do you insist on giving it to _me?"_

"It needs to be you, not Filianore, who takes the soul.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s…” Gwyndolin looked around the throne room desperately, as though some clue to make the words come easier would be somewhere on the walls. “I do not understand Father’s intentions, but before he… Before he sacrificed himself, he did not retrieve Filianore like he promised. We–” Gwyndolin stilled, bringing a hand up to their chest, as though it hurt. “I do not know what else to do.”

Anar looked at Gwynevere, because Gwyndolin rarely ever had such troubles expressing themselves, nor figuring out what to do, even if no one asked it of them. But Gwynevere looked worse than Gwyndolin, and twice as unable to speak. There were fiery tears flowing down her cheeks again, but this time the rage was nowhere to be found. Anar found himself reaching for her, distressed by her distress, before he caught himself and pulled back.

“Start from the beginning,” Anar said, finally. “Begin with what has happened to Father, I have a feeling the answers will be in the telling.”

Gwyndolin took a breath and then nodded. “Very well,” they said. “I will begin from the beginning. Gwynevere, do you wish to add anything?”

“Let me hear you tell it, and if there need be corrections or additions, I will make them,” she choked out, wiping her eyes and burning her hands. “I can barely speak clearly now.” Anar gave in and patted her shoulder awkwardly, shrugging when she shot him a look of confusion and disbelief.

“Go on,” he said, ignoring her look and turning to Gwyndolin impatiently. “Tell me.”

“It’s so strange. I feel like I’m a child again. This is what I would have done in my youth, but I would not have needed to fake my father’s death for it. I would have gone to your fortress, or your quarters,” they said, rambling in a way that was not their habit. But then they shook themselves and sighed and seemed to come together. “Very well. Father saw that the Witch of Izalith was right in trying to save the flame, because the first flame indeed faded before their eyes. You know what became of the Witch’s attempt to rekindle it. It created chaos, and destruction, and the battle was barely won. It was a failure, in truth. Father stopped the spread, however he managed to do that, but the land it lay upon was doomed. The demons overran the place, and the battle… changed Father. He came back with his knights and his own armor stained black, but he had seen something, I know not what, that terrified him.”

Gwyndolin looked at Anar just then, and looked away quickly before Anar could so much as raise an eyebrow. Before Anar could process that glance, they spoke again.

“I think it was the knights themselves. They were never the same after that battle. Their bodies were gone, and only their spirits remained. They could maneuver the armor, lift blades, and they possessed memory. They were no longer Knights, they were like one single massive being, acting as one. Their souls had melded together, had shared in knowledge, in strength, and survived despite the destruction of their bodies. It was something… truly terrifying to witness. Their strength surpassed Father’s own, I believe. And when he saw that…”

“Father began to fear the humans, it was why he fashioned the undead curse. Yes, I know all _that_ , but how does this relate to Filianore?” Anar could barely keep the impatience from his voice. He hated these _games_ and he hated that he had to play them to get anywhere.

“He did fear the humans, but Sen, more than that I believe he feared the strength of their progenitor. The one who found the Dark Soul. I think he saw that the inheritors of power, the ones who would survive the coming Dark, were the inheritors of the Pygmy Lord himself.”

“So easily forgotten,” Anar murmured. “That little Dark one had a story to tell all along. The Ancient Dragons were aware of this, in part.”

Gwyndolin stared at him aghast. “The Ancient Dragons… They possessed this knowledge?”

“Father was blasting them out of sky like rain,” Anar snorted. “They had some vested interest in his enemies among their ranks.”

“Father _never_ made an enemy of the other Lords, forgotten or otherwise.”

“No,” Anar agreed. “No, but he did keep his enemies close.”

“I recall no such tactics from Father,” Gwynevere finally said, her voice calm and measured like it had not been before.

“He kept _me_ close. He knew what I was capable of doing long before I did it. Of that I have no doubt.”

Gwyndolin was silent for a long time, and no one said anything, but then they spoke: “What makes you believe so?”

“I will tell you sometime,” he said, and knew that he might not.

“I see.” Gwyndolin was unreadable, of course, but their tone told him that they would not forget this. It was too important, too mysterious, to be dismissed so easily. But Anar and Gwyndolin were awoken from their wordless battle by Gwynevere.

“Continue,” she commanded. Gwyndolin nodded.

“I shall. It was this that, I believe, prompted him to do what he has done now; it's why he has burnt himself on the flame. He did it to keep this flame alive, out of desperation that was not there before Izalith's fall. He had offered kindling to it for a long time before, in the form of darker souls. The knights were in charge of that matter, but soon it became clear that even with the kindling the flame would eventually die out. He linked it and extended the age further. The age we live in now is the result of this, but the Dark cannot be held at bay forever.”

“But where does Filianore come into this? Why not bring her back here, if he fears the humans so much? She's better suited for his part of the soul.”

Something strange and new entered Gwyndolin's face. “She always was your favorite.” This was not true, as back in his time with them he had had no favorites, but Anar said nothing and only waited, again, for Gwyndolin to say what they meant. Gwyndolin looked back at him for a time, that bitter feeling back in their manner, and they looked away after a moment and continued. “Father gifted Filianore to the humans. He gifted her to the Ringed City.”

“Yes, I remember. What about this is relevant?”

“The Ringed City belongs to the inheritors of the Pygmy Lord. Sen, he is using her power to hold the Dark back. She is a closed door to the cycle.”

“How?” Anar asked, struggling to see why Gwyndolin looked so pained on behalf of a human city that Father decided to lock away from–

It hit him all at once, suddenly and horribly, the possibilities and the truth, without relent. He landed on no particular answer, but each assaulted his mind as his rage became a familiar, uncontrollable storm around him. Filianore’s power was absolute, sealing in the true sense; she would have done it without question. And since she had done it, Father's sacrifice made even more sense—

Not senseless. Not desperate. Calculated. With the Dark sealed, however he'd managed to make Filianore do it, he'd only needed to burn kindling strong enough, and the Age would extend further than it would with the cycle open. That was why his father had divided his soul up before burning, and it was why Filianore was not here. 

And Father needed one of _them_ to burn after him. Filianore could not burn if she was holding the cycle back. How many years had it been since he'd heard of her departure? And now Gwyndolin stood before him, drawing him back here after all these years, just to force his hand this way.

“Sen! Sen, stop—” That was Gwynevere’s voice, somewhere in the haze. He could hear her, but he could not respond. He tried to focus on bringing the eye of the storm inwards, so that the rage could occupy his body again, but without his old power it was harder than ever. His father knew he would have chosen death over serving the Age. So he had tricked him, he had _lied—_ And Gwyndolin had helped.

“Leave him be; come away from him.” Gwyndolin’s voice.

“But—”

“Trust me, Gwynevere. He needs to let it out somehow. This is for the best,” Gwyndolin’s voice said.

Finally, the calm began to center itself inside his chest and the tossing, sparking winds settled into his skin where they belonged. He took a breath, readjusted his garb, and faced them. Gwynevere looked as though she might charge at him, so he braced turned fully towards her, anticipating it, but she seemed to catch herself. “Now that you’re all in one piece again,” she said, recovering with a haughty toss of her head, “we can go on with the story.”

“No, the story is over,” Gwyndolin said heavily, and it was then that Anar realized something. He was certain of this. Only he and Gwyndolin knew the full extent of what Father intended. Anar stared at Gwyndolin’s gazeless face, and he had never before felt like more of a stranger to his sibling. He wanted to tear the cowl off, to see the fear and regret, to assure himself that Gwyndolin was not the monster he assumed they were, but he could not. Not without alarming Gwynevere.

“There’s nothing left to tell,” Gwyndolin whispered, their voice never wavering. “Filianore will keep the Dark from the Light, and she will slumber forever, or she will be consumed by what she guards. It was a trick to keep the humans contained and docile. The effects of this on her—I am unsure of what they will be.”

The lightning was still at the edges of this form, but he kept a tight hold on it and waited.

“We each had our purpose,” Gwynevere muttered, confirming that she knew nothing of what was to befall them. How had Gwyndolin hidden it from her? They always were a manipulative sort, but in the lie Anar could see a thread of mercy. Kindness. Gwynevere adored Father, though they clashed often. “We each had a purpose at our appointed times. You,” she pointed to Anar, “to cull the archdragons, I, to beckon peace and beauty.” She smiled with a hint of her old self, teasing and proud, like a peacock in the gardens. “And Gwyndolin to punish the sinners and—” She frowned, and Anar watched her carefully, to see what she would do.

But Gwyndolin only laughed. “You may say it. I was born to take over Mother’s duties over sin, though Father would never say as much. What else has fallen to me has yet to be seen.”

Gwynevere inclined her head slowly, a silent apology and acknowledgment of the weight on Gwyndolin’s shoulders. That was more maturity than Anar was accustomed to, from her. He thought, a moment ago, that knowledge of what Father planned would break her. Now, he was not so sure.

“Filianore is serving her purpose now,” she said, “and we cannot say for certain what that purpose is, nor what the result is meant to be. She was promised that Father would retrieve her, so I believe that this was no permanent solution."

“Father is in no state to confirm nor deny any of our suspicions, nor is he in any state to retrieve her from that station,” Gwyndolin pointed out, lying as always. “We are in the same position we would be in should we leave this to fate, or to Father’s design. Essentially,” they smiled with a hint of irony, “we are blind.”

Anar snorted. “Do you think he did not promise this with full knowledge of what would happen?”

Gwyndolin’s mouth turned down, angry that he was not playing along with their game.

“It’s impossible to say,” Gwynevere replied, unaware of the battle between her brother and her sibling. “I could never read him. But he left us parts of his soul, and this tells me that he did intend one of us to inherit his throne."

Gwyndolin seemed to notice then that Gwynevere was looking to them meaningfully. "Not me,” they said, as if they were affronted. As if they were not lying.

“You were always the one he trusted most deeply,” Gwynevere said lightly, too lightly.

“I was not! That was you!” Gwyndolin pointed to Anar with an accusing finger. And that was honesty, Anar realized. That was honest.

“No, it was always either you or it was Fili,” Anar said. “It’s obvious. He’s basically left you the crown. Don’t deny it. You are essentially the Ruler of Lordran. Gwynevere won't rule, and I definitely won't. Whatever Father intended, it's clear what he intended for you.”

“I prefer not to be seen,” Gwyndolin said, looking away awkwardly when Anar did not rise to their bait. “You know this. Besides. Father entrusted you with the most of any of us. You would have been in my place if you hadn’t— You know.”

“I betrayed him.”

“He took it very badly,” Gwynevere said quietly. “He was never the same. Every gate to Lordran was shut after you faced him, every fortress was manned by twice the amount of men it could hold, and the curse… It was like he didn’t care anymore. I think it’s why he decided to—”

“I don’t need to hear this,” Anar interrupted. “Forget Father; I need to see Filianore.”

“There’s no way of knowing if we can help her,” Gwynevere said. “We do not know what will happen if we do take her from the City, not to her, and not to the world. Father has left us the Soul, and with it we can accomplish much. For Filianore, and for him. We can keep this age bright. I do not know what you plan to do, Sen,” she looked at him with some distrust, "but I confess I do not even know why Gwyndolin wanted you here anyway. Would you even be willing to serve the flame?"

Anar ignored her, but not the way she had changed his "I" to "we," and left him out of it, alone. He looked to Gwyndolin. “Your Majesty,” he said, only a little mockingly. “Show me the Lordvessel.”

Gwyndolin inclined their head and turned away, leading them all through a door on the right, and down steps until they reached the lift that would take them to the vessel. He scoured the halls they passed for signs of his knights, but found only a single spear, propped against a wall and abandoned. Strange, he thought, that Anor Londo should be so empty when Father's plan had succeeded, extending the age with his own body. He watched Gwyndolin ahead, where Gwynevere flanked them, and wondered what it was Gwyndolin cared about. He felt, walking behind them, as though he were being led through a painting, carefully curated and cultivated to make him suspicious.

When they reached the Lordvessel, those suspicions were put aside. Looking upon it now, it looked to be the same as it had been when Father had used it himself. Gwyndolin stood at its rim, their gaze on him with a smile like a sneer. “To the Ringed City? To confirm what I have already told you?”

“Yes,” Anar said. “I can’t stand to be here another second. And I do not trust you,” he added.

“Very well.” Gwyndolin’s demeanor changed, then, into something more like the goddess than it had been. “But be aware: it is as Gwynevere says. We know not the cost of waking her; we have only theories.”

“Take me to her.” Anar spoke firmly, his old commands coming back naturally here in the throne room. “I won’t just leave her to rot.”

Gwyndolin's smile changed from that familiar, superior smile into a softer one. It might have been an attempt to pull their power into the vessel, but Anar felt as though they were hiding. He felt it even more when all they said was: “I know.” For a moment, Anar understood their bitter smiles, their silences, and their masks.

He understood why he was here, why Gwyndolin had brought him here and carried out Father's intentions.

Gwyndolin wanted Filianore to live. He was sure, then, as sure as he could be with Gwyndolin, that he understood what they wanted. That the two of them had the same goal, though they thought of the end differently. Because he thought, for a moment, that Gwyndolin would not mind if Anar burnt in place of the rest.

But that thought was to simmer quietly, nowhere, for then approached Gwynevere, who watched him with her feelings more clearly on her face than their sibling's. He saw nothing in her gaze but the discomfort and unhappiness that came with guilt, unease, and fear, and he knew she tried to hide it behind smugness and pride. He knew her, then, like he had before. The world began to fade around them as the two clasped hands and reached out for his own. Gwynevere's face reflected only what he himself saw, and for once there was honesty between the two of them. 

But Gwyndolin was impassive, a stone, and when Anar took their hand, it felt like grasping ice.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

**The Ringed City; His Sister’s Prison**

* * *

He had never seen the Ringed City, but he had guessed what it might look like. It was indeed surrounded by walls, in a circle of what looked like sheer defense. He knew, immediately, that it was a cage for the human inhabitants as much as it was a cage for his sister.

“They still do that?” he asked, moving the veil they’d thrown over him to the side to get a better look at the bowing populace. The sudden silence in the streets and the chill of fear that seemed to flow through every human’s breath reminded him too starkly of an age long past, when he would have stood like this, unhidden, by his father’s side before the throngs of people and before the soldiers at war. “I thought that was just for Father.”

“It was,” Gwyndolin sighed. “But, like you said, I am Lord of Sunlight now, for however long Gwynevere dodges the title. They bow to me.”

“Fools,” Anar muttered, but it was just to disguise his deep discomfort. “Were they always so small? I think I’ve been around dragons too long.”

Gwynevere laughed, careless in a way he had not heard for centuries. A sigh went through the city after the ripples of her laughter. “I think we became bigger, since the flame invigorates us as it does not them. We do tower over them, don’t we?” Anar could only scoff at that, though she looked smug and happy in that way she so often did but hadn’t seemed to lately at all. Her old light returned to her in the face of this adoration, and though he hated the farce and the cruelty of it, he loved her.

He drew the veil closed again, unhappy at the thought. More mysteries. Gwyndolin’s bitterness, Gwynevere’s grief, the way she had turned golden Anor Londo black, and the pedestal untouched in the Cathedral; they all pointed to something he did not want to know, nor name. It was shaped like his love for them, despite their monstrosity. Despite his own. “Filianore is just up those stairs?”

“Yes,” Gwynevere said, still with a smile in her voice. “She is, but you must remain hidden and calm until we are alone, all right?”

Anar did not know why this was particularly necessary to say, as veiled up as he was, but he gave his agreement, and they walked, slowly and torturously, up the steps towards the main chambers. “Anor Londo’s steps; are they more or less or equally as stupid as these?”

“Sen,” Gwyndolin warned. “Those steps were my design.”

Anar snorted. “You should stop calling me by that title by the way,” he said. “I know it's the only one left, but it's not mine. I go by Anar now.”

There was a disbelieving laugh from Gwynevere, and he couldn’t see her face now that his veil was sealed up, but he could imagine the annoying look on it. “Why,” she asked, “have you named yourself after the most irritating fruit on the planet?”

“Pomegranates aren’t irritating,” Anar snapped. “Besides, what would you know about it? Servants probably seed them for you now.”

They walked in silence until they reached the doorway the stood between the city’s people and their gift from the Lord of Sunlight. “I peeled them for us, once,” she said quietly.

“When we were kids.”

“I used to hate getting my hands all sticky and purple, but I did.”

Anar looked at her then, removing the veil though they had said not to do it yet. It wouldn’t matter. No one here would remember or know his face. He could recall, like it had been an hour ago, the feeling of lying around in Gwyndolin’s chamber, Gwynevere peeling pomegranates with ease, her strength making the peel barely an obstacle. Her hands were too large to seed the fine fruit, so she would then pass it to Filianore, who would begin to take the fruit apart, dividing it between them all evenly. And then Gwynevere would take up the next, and the process would repeat.

“Fili’s job was dividing them,” Gwyndolin laughed, their smile warm for the first time since… Anar didn’t know how long it had been, since he’d last seen that smile. Without knives, without fangs, without cruelty. Filianore had always brought that out in them all, but in Gwyndolin especially. But still, there was the edge of darkness in that smile.

Not one of them made a move to open the door, waiting for the other to take up the lead. Finally, it was Gwynevere who pushed the door open. “She was always the fairest of us all.”

The room revealed was not large, not by their standards, but it was beginning to show signs of something he recognized, if only a little. There was the raised, cushioned dais of that the women of the Sun tended to prefer, lounging as they did without much need for actual sleep, and it was surrounded by roses growing from a little garden about its feet. A woman tended them or seemed to. A knightess in silver armor and flowing veils, rather like Filianore favored, who looked up as they entered, a look of sharp anger on her face, but it faded quickly as she fell into a bow. Her hand, which had gone to her sword, fell abruptly to the floor by her floor-turned face.

Gwynevere dismissed the knightess, who left with deference and confusion, but without argument. But Anar did not spare her another glance, for he recognized the roses.

Fillianore would settle nowhere without roses, without flowers. And even if she did not want to say it, she would resent the lack of them. Was it Father who planted them, only to put her to sleep without a chance to wake her again? He looked to Gwyndolin, whose smile had fallen a little, into something sadder and more mournful, and who watched the roses too.

Who had accompanied Filianore out to this strange city, this other world, where none of her family resided? “Is she alone?”

“No,” Gwynevere said. “She is attended by several of the Church, this knightess that you saw, and others, too. She is not alone.”

“Look at her.” Anar's storm was rising under his skin, dangerously close to the surface. “Look at her and tell me that she is not alone. How long has she been in this sleep?” He could barely remember when he had heard the news of this city; it was too long ago.

“Anar, we need you to be calm if you want to help—”

Anar looked at Gwynevere silently. “I don’t know if I like you calling me that,” he told her finally.

“Make up your mind on what you want to be called, Brother,” Gwynevere said, her voice coming to him from further away than he expected. He broke away from Gwyndolin’s absent, hidden stare to see that Gwynevere had reached the roses. Anar was forced to look up from them and confront his sister’s accusatory, suspicious eyes, and then the sleeping form of his youngest sister behind her.

“How could he permit this to happen?” he asked, but this time he felt like every light was snuffed out of him. There would be no storms. “Will he ever tire of using you?”

“If it is as we think, and if she is placed as a seal,” Gwyndolin said, “then the key appears to be the egg she cradles, but that is simply a theory Gwynevere and I discussed.”

“Oh.” Anar spoke quietly, but Gwyndolin tensed. Good; he was angry again, even though he had learned nothing new about them. “You have had time for theories about the egg? Our sister is being used to seal an entire city, and you two have been here, all along, exchanging _theories_ and doing nothing?”

“Anar,” Gwynevere began, quietly, “this is very sensitive and dangerous, you cannot burst apart in here.”

Anar fought to control himself, he really did, but it was a long time before the crackling ended and the wind stopped. Rose petals fell as he took a breath, and he thought, painfully, of Filianore and her smile. Her trust. “How do we wake her?”

“Did you hear what I said? There is the question, first,” Gwyndolin said, “of whether or not we should.”

“We should.”

“Then we need to know first what she seals the Dark in, exactly. Is it the city, or the humans themselves? After that, we have to ascertain how, and what about her power is sealing it.” Gwyndolin spoke with a tentative speed that picked up the more they said. “Of all of us, you’re the only one who has seen the Abyss, who remembers—You _fought_ in the war against the dragons and you've seen the occult firsthand.”

“Very well,” Anar muttered, snatching a petal out of the air and then letting it drift back down to the floor. He saw now, more clearly, why Gwyndolin and Gwynevere had not simply consumed his part of the Soul alongside their own portions. “Let me do my part in your story, then.”

He came to stand before Filianore’s sleeping form and he could feel her breath come slowly and steadily as though she were truly awake. But she did not shift, as she often did in sleep, at the slightest sound or change in the room. She was unnaturally asleep, asleep in a way that was not her _way_.

The source of the sleep was clear, immediately, as he neared her face more and more. Her eyes were leaking coagulated Dark, so thoroughly condensed that it looked to be straight from the Abyss. But how had there been time enough for—

Oh.

The Dark, contrary to what his father believed, was not something wholly unique to humanity, nor the descendants of the Pygmies. No; it lived and pulsed in the world itself. It was natural, it was a resource, and it was destructive when it was denied. He had put it inside Filianore, and Anar could guess why. “He’s sealed the Dark, like you suspected,” he said. “But it’s not all that was sealed.”

“What do you mean?” Gwynevere asked with a tremor in her voice that he hadn’t heard in a long time.

“Something about this city is like the Sign he created; like the curse. He’s subjected her to it, too. But it isn’t just the Dark.” He reached out and lifted the corner of Filianore’s draping sleeve from the egg she cradled in her slumber. It was cracked, a slight, minute crack, but it was broken. And it pulsed beneath the surface. “The seal isn’t sealing the Dark away. It’s sealing the Dark _inside_ her, and it has rotted inside of her, but it has not encompassed the roses, nor the egg. She has been sleeping for more than this Age.”

Gwyndolin approached the dais. “How do you know?”

“This,” he said, “is the egg of an archdragon. It is hatching. It takes roughly one hundred years for a true dragon’s egg to hatch. She has been here for at least that long.” Gwynevere gasped, and the breath she let out after was shaky, and pained, but Anar couldn’t do a thing to comfort her. Gwyndolin was the only one who broke the silence and the horror in the air.

“Father…”

“You said that he’d come back for her,” Anar said. “I don’t think he planned to. Time is stopped here.”

“Father would not just leave her,” Gwynevere whispered.

“He would. Gwyndolin has lied to you.”

“What do you mean?”

Anar looked at Gwyndolin’s impassive face. “Gwyndolin,” he said, “knows what Father intended. And so do I.”

Gwynevere turned to look at Gwyndolin. “What do you mean? Gwyndolin? What does he mean?”

Anar spoke when Gwyndolin made no move to, relishing in revealing this secret knowledge Gwyndolin had hidden away from their sister. “Father has not renewed the cycle; he has merely disrupted it. Filianore will hold that disruption in place, until one of us burns in Father’s place and begins it all again.”

“Perhaps,” Gwyndolin whispered. “Perhaps he did assume such a thing. I cannot know.”

Gwynevere did not speak, but she stared between them, her horror turning her more and more to stone. Her emotion fell away, and before them was just Gwynevere, Princess of Sunlight, who did not give any truth away. “Three portions of his soul,” Gwynevere said, quietly. “Which of us did he expect to set themselves alight?”

Anar did not answer. They stood, now with the truth before each of them in full, and after this horrible reality set in, this new world where their father really did send their sister into a sleep with no end in sight and expect one of them to burn in a ritual they had seen the effects of, Anar spoke. “What is going to happen to the city if we wake her?” There was no answer to the question, but he thought he knew the answer to this, too. He brushed a black, inky tear from his sister’s face. “It’s going to unleash whatever balance he thinks he made, isn’t it? Filianore will be caught in the middle, in between who knows how many years.”

“That’s the logical conclusion,” Gwyndolin laughed, dark and despairing. “I didn’t want to believe it, but he really set it up this way. It’s either Filianore, or this entire age.”

 _This is why I left_ , Anar didn’t say. Because now, standing in front of Filianore, he wondered how he hadn’t thought to bring them with him. How had he not done more? How had he not tried? He could have torn Anor Londo down. He could have done _something._

“I am going to wake her,” he said.

“But the Dark has been here all this time.” Gwyndolin came to stand beside him at the dais before the great bed. “It’s been in there so long.”

“There’s no other choice,” he said. “What properties do you think it might have?”

Gwyndolin shook their head and then, slowly, brought their hands to their cowl, lifting it for the first time. Cradling the cowl in their hands, Gwyndolin looked more like themselves, and less like the Dark Sun. Anar felt, for the first time, like he could reach out and pull his sibling closer. “Come on,” Anar prompted. “It’s not over yet.”

“It might as well be,” Gwyndolin sighed. “The Abyss is used to peer through the ages. The fire keepers use it, sometimes, to see. This is how we select the purest of them before their silencing.”

“That’s—”

“Monstrous,” Gwyndolin said, dully. “I see it now.”

“That’s even worse,” Anar said quietly, but he held Gwyndolin anyway, because he was the same, and pulled them closer into his arms. He met Gwynevere’s eyes over Gwyndolin’s silver hair and was surprised to see her face burnt with tears. She ran forward the moment their eyes met, like she had been waiting for permission, and encompassed them both in her own embrace. She was warm; as warm as he remembered. And strangely wet.

The burns, he realized. Her face, in his shoulder, was covered in tears and burns. 

"You were right to use me," he said. Gwyndolin tensed in his arms. "Yes, I knew. You can fool me, but you cannot keep me fooled. I would have done it anyway."

Silence. And then arms around him, and a quiet "I know."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ You can read all about my fire keeper lore theories and my Velka conspiracy theory in this story about anastacia of astora and gwyndolin here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23137543).
> 
> I hope this chapter finds you well, and that you have enjoyed the story and the characters thus far!


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

**Inhaling the Abyss: Drastic Measures**

* * *

The Dark would envelop him.

“Have you found anything? Is this it?”

“It has been two seconds, approximately, dear Gwyndie,” Gwynevere said flatly. Anar laughed, going in deeper than before. He hoped they would not panic when they realized what he was going to do.

“Forgive me if I seem a little frightened,” Gwyndolin snapped, somewhere above him, back on the surface above the flooding waters of New Londo. Anar leaned in further, the water feeling like air around him and let it inside him. It was easy; he knew that was the secret behind his storm.

He had looked to Gwyndolin before passing through the great arching gate of the fallen city, but they only looked away from him, terrified of the rising Abyss. It didn’t feel like anything, though, when he passed into it. It felt formless, shapeless, and though it might have bothered Gwyndolin, Anar had long since relinquished the spark of flame that fed his soul. Everything left was his own, and his own soul leaned towards the Abyss with longing. He felt the stagnating Dark call to him.

The loss of the flame in his soul had summoned storms, with him as the eye, pushing outwards and searching for anything to fill the void. So now he summoned the storm and let it all in.

“Anar?”

“Don’t interrupt, Gwyndolin!”

“I don’t like this,” Gwyndolin’s voice said. “I don’t like not having a plan, I don’t like sending him down there; there has to be another—”

“I am ready,” Anar called, aware that his voice sounded fundamentally wrong even to his own ears. “Let me back in.”

“Oh, no,” Gwynevere whispered, audible over the roar of the Dark, and began to pull on the chain they’d wrapped around Anar’s waist, hauling him back towards the doorway and out of the water. “Oh, how did this—”

“Your voice—Your _face_!” Gwyndolin’s mask obscured their face again, but their horror was clear, even in the dark of the flooded city. He could imagine what his face looked like, but Anar couldn’t spare it a thought. They didn’t have much more time.

“Sen—I mean,” Gwynevere shook her head. “What have you done?”

Anar couldn’t quite speak, not through the fog, but he could hold his arm out, a silent command, and they took it. The Vessel took them away from the flood, back to the gatehouse at the foot of the great bridge in the Ringed City, but Gwyndolin’s fears were clearly not assuaged.

“How are we going to get back to the room?” Gwyndolin asked, wringing their hands as the sunlight lit the tendrils of stagnant dark behind Anar’s eyes. “He’s oozing the Abyss itself! We didn’t plan this. I did not _expect_ this. How are we going to get _back?”_

“Like this,” Gwynevere announced, and removed the veil about her hair. She stepped out from the shadows and into the light, sending dazzling beams about the city and blinding every onlooker as she moved forwards ahead of them. The bridge, once lit with the activity of peddlers and merchants, fell silent into awe. She only turned back to them when the humans fell in prostration. She laughed, “We might as well use it to save Filianore.”

Anar could not say anything, but if he could he would have told her she was terrible, but great, like any good queen should be. He couldn’t, though, lest the festering Dark escape, so he let Gwyndolin hold his veil closed as they hurried up the awful, never-ending steps.

“I see the point of your complaint now,” Gwyndolin admitted, a little desperately. They looked distraught, but perhaps they were out of breath. “These stairs were really so stupid. The ones in Anor Londo are worse.

“Please,” they gasped, without pause. “Don’t die. Stay alive, all right? I can’t lose you both. And if you go, Gwynevere will just leave again. She’ll never stay in Anor Londo, and I’ll be all alone.” This was the honesty Anar had always wanted from Gwyndolin, and he couldn’t do a thing to comfort them but continue up the stairs until they reached the door again, in silence. It was probably because of this that Gwyndolin had confessed any of their feelings, he thought.

The warriors who guarded the place parted easily at the sight of Gwyndolin, though their gazes lingered, again, on him as they passed through. Gwyndolin pushed him through the door, slamming it shut behind them as they followed.

“Should we wait for Gwynevere?” Gwyndolin asked, their fear clear in their voice. Anar really felt terrible, but he couldn’t respond, and he couldn’t do anything but shake apart and let the storm begin. Gwyndolin, realizing what was happening, cast up their shield and ran from the room, slamming the door shut behind them, cursing and calling on a goddess that was not Gwynevere all the way.

The Dark Sun was capable of blasphemy too, Anar thought before the Dark started to swirl out of him and sink into the roses. This was the only chance he’d get, he realized, to put it somewhere and avoid letting it loose. He reached out and pressed his hands to Filianore’s face, this time with the intent to wake her. She stirred, and as the Abyss bled out of him, he pulled in more, a seamless stream, uninterrupted, that did not trigger the seal. 

Her eyes were wide on his now as he pulled the Abyss out, but they were unseeing. Those green eyes were silver now, empty, vacant, but terrified. He could not even whisper to tell her it was him, her brother, not to worry, and he could see her moving rapidly between fighting the seal and fighting him. He prayed, he did not know to who or what, that she would just _trust him_ …

She had trusted their father, without hesitation, so many times. Why did she fight it now? He pressed onto the storm around him, widening the gyre out into an eye that encompassed them both, and did not move from his place as the Abyss left her entirely. She still fought, weakly, but he could not spare that a thought right now. He could not spare a thought for anything but the roses and the brambles at her feet, infusing them with the seal and all of the Dark he could pull from the rot of the Abyss.

Finally, the storm died away, and Filianore shook in the sudden calm of the room. “Father?”

“No,” he coughed. “No, definitely not Father.”

“Brother!” She leapt to her feet, but he pushed her back, remembering the egg.

“Do we need to worry about that?”

“What? Oh, this egg?” Filianore leaned forwards, touching it gently. It seemed to pulse under her touch. “It’s alive? I thought it would fade with the age… Has it been so long? Has no time passed at all? Have you returned to our side?”

“No,” Anar said, unsure to which question he was answering. For a while, she did not say anything else.

“Brother.” Filianore’s voice when it finally came was so sad and small in the empty room. “What have you done?”

“I’ve saved you,” he said.

“You’ve unleashed—How am I alive?”

“I did not unleash anything. We have to go find Gwyndolin and Gwynevere.”

Filianore took the egg in her arms, obviously unwilling to let it go, even in a moment of such chaos and confusion. “I’m taking the egg,” she said, unnecessarily. “I want to see what hatches from it.”

He remembered the girl who held birds in her hands as though they might melt, who delicately separated the parts of the pomegranates so that her siblings did not fight, and who had listened to her father without hesitation. He would not tell her what would hatch from the egg; the delight of owning discovery should be hers. “Of course. I’ll help you keep it safe,” he told her.

There was a knock at the door as he helped her down from the bed, carefully avoiding contact with the now very dangerous roses. “Did you _have_ to use the roses?” Filianore asked with something approaching bitterness. Thankfully, the knock was a good enough distraction for her, and he called out and demanded to know who knocked.

“It’s just us,” Gwynevere called out loudly. And then, in a very different voice, “Get out of the way! Don’t you know who we are? This is the _Lord of Sunlight_.” She obviously got whatever humans were pestering her to leave her and Gwyndolin alone, because next came: “Are you dead?” There was a great sizzling, and a smell like wood burning. She was scared, he realized, and pretending desperately as though she was not. “Please don’t be dead.”

“We’re not dead!” Filianore laughed, with the delighted confusion of someone who did not know that she might have died, and the door flew open.

Gwynevere burst through, attaching herself firmly to her sister, pressing kiss after kiss into her hair. Gwyndolin was soon to follow, though they reached out to hold Anar’s hand through it. 

“Do you think my eyes will come back?” Filianore asked, when the joy of reunion faded into a steady pulse of realization, understanding, and grief. Her voice was small again, and her eyes, sightless, looked so empty in their new color.

“They’re still there, dear,” Gwynevere told her gently. “But I have no way of knowing. Only time will tell.”

They sat, when they realized the world out there needed confronting, quietly on the steps between the Dark-fed roses. Filianore was quiet, the egg in her lap and her arms about it in an embrace, as Gwynevere stroked her hair.

“You realize the humans are going to demand an explanation,” Gwyndolin said. “And I have to give it in a way that does not sound like I have disobeyed Father.”

“Can’t you just tell them to figure it out themselves? Just give them their damned city,” Gwynevere scoffed.

Anar thought about the way the Abyss could make people peer through time, the way the seal had absolutely frozen Filianore in place for at least two hundred years. Unleashing the city from this seal would damn every inhabitant. And for what? Father had made sure that this particular human place would never see the end of time, and if it did, it would be on the worst possible terms.

“We could break the seal,” Gwynevere said, in a quiet and somber voice. “It could potentially have—Yes, I know—Terrible consequences, but they would at least be free.”

“We do not know what will happen if it’s broken,” Gwyndolin said, quietly. “But I do not think Father would have hurt Filianore. I say we keep the seal and go home. The city can be left to itself. It has certainly ruled itself well without any of us here.”

Gwynevere opened her mouth to argue, but Anar held up a hand. “What do you think we should do?” he asked Filianore.

Filianore did not look at him, not really, for she could not see him. But she smiled in his direction. “Have you met Shira?”

“No.”

“The knightess,” Gwyndolin reminded him. “We met her briefly by the roses.”

“Oh,” Anar said. “Yes, we have met her.”

“Do you believe she tended the roses well? She took care of me well enough. I owe her a great many things. She even kept the egg safe from Father, who wished to take it once I slumbered.”

Gwynevere moved a strand of hair out of Filianore’s face. “What do you mean, dear?”

“Do you not think she would make a great stewardess?” Filianore’s smile was radiant, and innocent, and sharply clever. “A city frozen in time would never need pruning.”

Anar realized they were looking to him for his input, but he could not give it. He shook his head. “Filianore’s right. We don’t know what will happen. But the only reason she’s alive is because of her Lord’s soul. The humans have no such thing. We’d only accelerate the undead curse in the city, at the worst, or we’d turn them all to dust at the best. We can at least give them stability.”

Gwynevere looked back to the room just beyond the cathedral’s steps. “So, we leave the seal in place?” 

“For now,” Gwyndolin said, surprising Anar again. “It seems to be the right thing to do.”

“I’ll stay behind and explain,” Gwynevere said. “I’ll spin something about Filanore’s power being needed in Anor Londo, and we can— Do you think they know about New Londo?”

“It’s an isolated city,” Filianore said quietly. “Far from Lordran and too separate. I doubt they know.”

Gwynevere nodded slowly, an interested look on her face. “We shall try our hands at New Londo again, then. Hopefully with better results this time.”

“You know why he did this, right?” Anar asked, unable to keep his peace. “You _know_ why he gave them this city, and Filianore.”

“I’m not saying Father was just to do so,” Gwynevere returned. “But what is done is done. We ought to at least let the place do its job.”

“This place’s _job_ is what nearly killed Filianore,” Anar snapped, his patience ending. “How many times are we going to walk around this? For how long will you continue to ignore that every single thing that has gone wrong has its source in Father?”

They sat in silence, sullen and tense, and Anar knew Filianore was fretful and aching to say something to fix their unhappiness. She could not, however, for she barely understood what was being said.

“Let’s go back,” Gwyndolin muttered. “We can’t talk about this here. We’ll decide what to do together. Gwynevere, like you said: spin a story.”

Filianore clutched her egg tighter to her chest and rested her cheek against it, and her eyes were wide and unseeing rather than shut. Anar reached out and helped her stand, but she did so reluctantly.

“Are you sure Father will not be upset?” She meant not only her own awakening, but Anar’s own return too.

“They’ll all fill you in at home,” Gwynevere said in a kind, gentle voice, and she took Filianore's other hand. “Let them get you out of this place.”

Gwynevere began to step back, relinquishing her sister, but Gwyndolin lifted a hand after a moment. “No,” they said slowly, and Gwynevere froze. “Let me stay instead. Stories are my own domain. I will rejoin you soon.”

With that, Gwyndolin moved away from them, their hand raised in farewell, and then they were gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost didn't get this up at my usual time! I hope you're all still well if you're returning, and if you're new: welcome! I, for one, cannot wait for my dear Ornstein to show up!


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

**Golden Anor Londo; Less Desolate, Somehow**

* * *

The great hall was not empty when the fog cleared and they found themselves there again.

He wasn’t surprised, not really. They had told him the dragon slayer had remained. He had known, from the beginning almost, that the dragon slayer stayed behind. It was one thing to know, but it was quite another to see him, like a figment from a memory, before his own eyes.

“Your Highness,” was the dragon slayer’s greeting, after several centuries of silence and staring. Then he dropped into a deep bow, arm across his chest and over his heart, as Anar’s knights were often prone to doing in his presence.

“Shameless, isn’t he?” Gwynevere took Filianore’s hands and guided her away. “We shall go have a bath; I think.”

“Where will I put the egg?” Filianore asked, refusing to be guided away so easily.

“Bring it with you,” Gwynevere said with the flippant ease of someone not worried about anything resembling consequences, and she pulled on her sister's arms again.

There was a slow and weighty shift somewhere out of sight, a sound like a badly tightened drum, and Anar was torn from the warm, familiar scene to the horrific sight of the executioner. The very same one from his own time, the same one who had defiled the dead, and he stood before Anar, the firstborn of Anor Londo and barely bowed his puny head. Insolent. This affront to all honor was arrayed in golden armor and finery unbefitting of his station, and then, to add to the injury, he came to stand by Anar's own dragon slayer. 

Anar shot a glare at Gwynevere, who looked away with an uncomfortable grimace.

Deliberate. This was deliberately done. An insult to his most loyal knight and to his own memory. Ornstein deserved the regalia, the splendor of his armor, but that beast did not. It was a mess of symbols, of meanings, and it meant that Ornstein had been brought low in the same moment that he had been rewarded for his loyalty to the king. He had been punished. 

Gwynevere took Filanore's hands again and tried to disappear, but Anar was not so shocked by the sight of the executioner that he did not have his wits about him. “No,” he said at the last moment, just as his sisters were about to leave his presence. “No, you will not take the egg with you. Leave it here.”

Filianore looked at the egg in her arms and the little fissure in its shell pulsated steadily. “What if it should hatch without me here to see it?”

“Leave the bath for another century, then,” he said, and he did not take his glare off Smough for a second. It made his tone harsher than it had to be, he realized, so he looked away and tried to smile at Filianore, who did not deserve his rage. She looked torn, but thankfully Gwynevere seemed willing to wait for her to make up her mind. This taken care of, Anar turned again to see Ornstein rising from his bow, that unreadable helm exactly as Anar remembered it. Disgusting that Ornstein should bow and the executioner should barely incline his head. 

“Sen, Firstborn of the Lord of Sunlight,” was the great knight’s formal greeting.

Anar grinned. “You’re under there, old friend?”

“Yes.”

“You’re the only one left?”

“Yes, Highness.”

Anar's smile only grew, despite the strange, new distance between them now. It had been an unimaginably long time, he supposed, some of the ease of the past was likely to need some time to unthaw. “No need for that, Dragon Slayer.” Should he give his title? Or his name? “I go by Anar, for the moment,” he explained instead.

The confusion in Ornstein’s demeanor was obvious, it was in the way his head started to tilt before remembering not to, but it was short-lived. He merely nodded in the end, and bowed again, shallowly this time, less formal. “Not Anor?”

“No. Anar.”

“Anar,” Ornstein repeated, with the same weight he’d given to the ancient title.

“Where were you before, when I arrived first?”

Ornstein did not answer, but the executioner stepped forwards. “The Dark Sun commanded that we leave you to yourselves until further orders were given," he said in a heavy, dull voice. 

Loathe to take the monster at his word, Anar turned to Ornstein for confirmation. His knight nodded stiffly. “I’ll bet they did,” Anar muttered. "Where do you usually stand guard?"

Ornstein did not answer, which was strange, but Anar did not have a chance to linger on this. “I shall at least change this dress, if not bathe,” Filianore announced, and she put the egg down on the floor, having apparently made up her mind. “Call me, no matter my situation, should anything change with this egg.” With that, Gwynevere took her hand and led her away, mouthing something at Anar. But Anar did not understand what she meant, so he shrugged when his sister’s face darkened with irritation.

“Highness— Anar, I mean.” Ornstein gestured to the egg. “I know of a place to keep the princess’s charge safe until her return.”

“It’s the princess’s _egg_ ,” Anar said flatly. “Don’t aggrandize it too much, it’ll hear you and hatch into Gwyndolin. Take me wherever you’re going.” Anar turned to Smough. “You. Return to your post.”

They left Smough behind in the great hall and continued down to the throne room, the egg safely in Anar’s arms and its pulsing edges holding his attention as they left the executioner behind.

“Anar,” Ornstein began, “I noticed your distaste for the executioner. Why do you hate him so?”

The egg couldn’t hold his attention too long when Ornstein’s impassive mask was proving to be no obstacle to his familiar, greatly missed voice. “Is that what you would ask me, after all this time?”

Ornstein shrugged, and said nothing more. 

“Maybe,” Anar sighed finally, “I hate him because he reminds me of who I was before; because I did not hate him before. Do you know how often I attended an execution and felt nothing? And yet recoiled in disgust when I learned of his habits?

“I look back on it now with revulsion: but I do not know what repulses me more. The memory of who I was then, or the knowledge that I did not always hate his work. Only his habits.”

The throne room was as he remembered leaving it, and the egg found its comfortable nest in the great dais where the princess of sunlight herself would usually receive adherents and gifts and nobles of high standing.

Ornstein was still watching him; when he turned away from the egg’s vibrating shell, he saw that mask fixed steadily on his own face.

“There’s nothing to say, old friend,” Anar said when Ornstein’s hidden gaze turned nowhere else. “I do not blame you and I do not expect you to explain yourself. I don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“I almost went after you,” was the abrupt and unexpected reply.

Anar stared at him, searching in vain for some clue in Ornstein's mask, and thought that the dragon slayer sounded like he was confessing something, as if he wished to be absolved of some sin. “What stopped you?”

Finally, the mask turned away from him and towards the floor. “Fear that you had only gone mad— Have you heard what happened to Artorias?”

“Tales,” Anar said firmly. “Outlandish and impossible. None of them true.”

“I suppose not.” The silence drew on, but it was like it used to be before everything else, when they could just stand in silence without words and watch something else until words rose out of the air naturally, without breath, even. “What is this egg that the princess has found?”

“An archdragon.” Anar saw Ornstein tense and shift, but he did not move. Ornstein wouldn’t attack if his commander did not. _Fear that you’d gone mad_. Time to test if that fear still held his greatest knight in its grip. “Come, Dragon Slayer. Do you fear an infant?”

Silence, ungentle, and then a calm admission, “No. I trust you.”

“Don’t,” Anar said with a laugh. “Trust Filianore. She covets the egg.”

The comfortable silence descended again, but when Anar left the egg he saw that Ornstein’s mask was on him yet again. It was natural, he thought, that his old friend would be unsatisfied with all this dancing about. He sensed the question on Ornstein’s tongue before it was asked, and it was the one he expected when he heard it.

“May I ask why you have returned?”

“You do not know?”

“No,” Ornstein said. “Of course not.”

Anar pondered, for a moment, the great emptiness of Gwynevere’s favorite hall. Gwyndolin had not even mentioned to Ornstein that the firstborn might return. Did Ornstein even know of his father’s state? “Ornstein, old friend, where were you only a few hours ago?”

Ornstein gave a shrug that was slightly exaggerated so that it could be seen through is armor, and Anar recognized it from their time together before. "In this room, waiting for the Dark Sun's orders. We were moved from our post for your arrival."

"Where were you moved from? You did not answer me before."

Ornstein did not answer for a moment, but then he spoke with a slow voice. “The Dark Sun ordered that we guard the Cathedral painting recently. We have been stationed before it for a long time.”

Anar nearly turned on his heel to find Gwyndolin, but satisfied himself with a click of his tongue. “That’s not your usual post," he said calmly. "Or at least it was not anyone’s post but the guardians of the painting, last I was here."

"It has been a long time since you were here."

"Indeed. Much seems to have changed. The halls are emptier too. Where are the people of Anor Londo?”

“There has been an order binding them to their homes and quarters,” Ornstein said hesitantly, as though he was suddenly unsure whether or not his old fear for Anar’s sanity was ill-founded. 

“Oh? Is that not strange?”

Ornstein did not answer, but Anar did not need an answer. It was certainly strange. Gwyndolin had cleaned house before he arrived, had hidden away the people and the servants and the painting guardians. They had set a stage. What they planned to do when the curtains rose, Anar could not guess. He supposed the painting would be important, since they could not bear to leave it unguarded, not for anything. Not even for their game. 

He heard Filianore’s voice coming from the hall just outside. Without a second thought, he took a few steps forward and grabbed Ornstein’s arm, pulling him along and behind the dais towards a little door hidden behind the elegant draperies, one that would lead them outside.

“Incredible that the sun still shines on Anor Londo,” Anar said when the sun hit Ornstein’s armor squarely and blinded him with its reflection.

“The age was saved,” Ornstein said, and he lifted the helm from his head. To Anar’s relief, he looked like himself, and his skin was as he remembered it. Repeatedly sunburnt and scarred, and dear. “The cycle began yet again.”

“Hm. What do you know of my father’s state?”

“Highness,” was the answer, tentative and unsure, again. “My condolences.”

“No; none of that. Inform me of what you know.”

After the hesitation, which he expected, Ornstein began to speak. “Your father has cast himself on the flame to keep it burning.”

“Anything else?”

“I know not what you mean.”

Anar leaned back into the opening in the wall and heard nothing. “Worry not.”

“Highness.”

“I told you what I want you to call me,” Anar chided. “Do you know why you have been paired with _him?”_ Anar asked this, but he hoped that Ornstein did not know. An unfounded hope, of course. 

“I thought, at first, it was to punish me. Now I am not so sure. I have been paired with him less and less often now. I rarely see him, most days. I think the Dark Sun regrets making him one of the king’s knights.”

Anar could hear voices now, as they clearly approached the egg on the dais and neared the wall. Could Filianore be back so quickly? She must have been worried about that egg. The pulsating shell was probably a concern, though Anar couldn’t be bothered with it right now. The painting was an unusual detail, almost as unusual as Gwyndolin’s strange readjustment of Anar’s own hierarchy of knights. “What are your duties?”

Ornstein did not answer immediately, even though now there was no way to dodge the question. Anar looked at him after a moment, but his face was as impassive as the mask had been. “The painting,” he said, finally. “I guarded the painting, most recently. Beyond that… It seems as though the Dark Sun knows not what to do with me.”

Anar looked at him for a moment longer, taking in the apologetic look on his friend’s face. “Why does it need guarding?” he asked.

“I do not know. Someone tried to get in, I think. Or someone…”

The silence stretched on as Ornstein hesitated to say what needed to be said. “Someone tried to get out,” Anar finished.

“Highness.”

“I won’t remind you again,” Anar said, and returned to the gap in the brick of the wall to see Filianore holding the egg in her arms again. Ornstein followed after him, and the conversation ended there, on that foreboding note.

“What now?” Anar asked his sisters as he approached them. They looked up quickly, surprised at his entrance. Filianore was wearing gold now, and she fit right in with the sunlight. “Have any of you thought of that?”

Gwynevere and Filianore looked at each other forbiddingly and then at him with some distaste. “Brother,” Filianore said with a heavily implied annoyance, “Gwynevere says you know more about this egg than I do.”

“Do you want to know what will hatch out of it?”

“Not really,” Filianore told him, as he expected she would. She was not one to change her mind easily. “I want it to be a surprise. I want the joy of discovery to be mine.”

“Then I will not tell you.”

“But I do want you to tell me how to care for it.”

“Hold it close,” he advised her honestly, for she was warm as a princess of sunlight, warm enough to beckon a dragon from its shell. “You’ve done well to hold it close to you thus far.”

“If I had stayed asleep, and it had hatched, would you have cared for it?”

Anar did not answer, for he did not know how, but the onus of responding to that question was taken from him when Gwyndolin arrived, attendants in place behind them. It felt very practiced. “I would have taken care of it, Filianore,” they promised earnestly, or at least, in a way that sounded earnest to the ears of those who listened. Who could know?

But Anar was no longer in the mood for Gwyndolin’s games. In fact, he thought, for as long as he was here, he would dedicate the same effort Gwyndolin spent in manipulating him to upending their games.

“Why the painting?” he asked bluntly.

The look he received was withering to say the least. “Brother,” Gwyndolin said, more tensely than anything they’d said thus far, “must you treat everything like a battle?” And that meant his irritation and his plan to irritate Gwyndolin had been found out, which only annoyed him more.

“Why the painting?” he asked again, more insistently, ignoring the taunt at his old life. “Why guard the painting?”

“It’s not what you think,” Gwyndolin said after it was clear that Anar would not back down. Anar scoffed.

“You’ve been saying that a lot recently. Just when will you and the things I think of you align? You seem determined to keep them apart.”

Filianore spoke up, her voice a little less carefree than it was. “Is this about Mother?” she asked. “Mother is gone.” No one was prepared for that, Anar thought. Even Gwyndolin stared at Filianore with wounded surprise.

“Fili?” Gwynevere asked gently. “Why do you think this is about… Her?”

But Gwyndolin stepped in, dismissing their attendants with a wave of a hand and drawing the great doors shut behind them as the four of them stood together, each one watching the other suspiciously. “Must we do this in front of the humans?”

“What did you mean?” Anar asked Filianore, ignoring his sibling, secretly delighted that she had picked up on what he had suspected too. “Fili?”

“I’ve seen into the Abyss, you know. That’s why Father chose me.” She cradled the egg closer to her chest, her old levity and her mask of peace gone. Her eyes were unseeing and shut against what they could not behold, and she looked not lost but angry. “I know you know it was the Abyss that did this,” she said. “What else could it have been?”

“Yes,” Anar admitted. “I knew. We figured it out.”

“Well, the Abyss grants sight,” Filianore said. “Gwyndolin knows this, but they haven’t seen to the extent I have. None of you have.”

“What have you seen?”

“The same thing Mother saw,” she told them darkly, “the same thing Father hated us to see. I want to take this egg to my old room. It’s still here, right?”

“Fili—” Gwynevere reached out for her sister, the look on her face a mixture of worry and confusion. “Of course—”

“Is my rose garden still standing? Or has that been done away with?” Filianore’s expression did not change, but her voice was flat. Gwyndolin stood in silence, and so Gwynevere told Filianore that the garden still stood, and that no one had done away with it.

Filianore cradled the egg close and made for the door. But before she left, she turned towards them and said something that left them behind in quiet, unable to follow her.

“Anyway," she said, "Mother’s not in there. I’d know if she was.”

They stood in the quiet and stared at the doors. It was only later that Anar would realize that Ornstein had been there all along. Gwynevere left them, her face still drawn in concern and lined with worry, and went after Filianore. 

“Well,” Ornstein said, for the first time persuaded to something like his old, easy banter, “nothing has changed. Isn’t that nice to know?”

Anar looked at him, taking in the relaxed stance and the crossed arms. “What do you mean?”

“Not a single one of you can stand still in a room together without something like a swordless duel happening.”

Gwyndolin, to Anar’s surprise, actually laughed.

That night (for night did descend on Anor Londo, a true night, unlike the false one Gwyndolin had conjured to fool him into mourning), Anar went to the painting. It was shrouded in Dark, as he remembered.

But if Filianore’s visions were to be trusted, and they had to be, for they were born of the Abyss and time itself, then Mother was not here. He pressed his forehead to the layered canvas, the threat of tears and wind at the edge of his body and felt something distinctly alien to the city his father had built tugging at his skin.

Cool. Something cold. He put his hand against it. Yes, it was cold. “What’s in there,” he wondered aloud, “if not—”

“Everything Father fears,” came Gwynevere’s voice. He turned to see her standing there, dressed in her ordinary garb, obviously unprepared to sleep. “He placed it all in there. He told me often that everything that could destroy us would be placed safely within the painted world.”

“Shall we summon all of that forth?”

“Never!”

He only laughed. “I speak seriously,” he said. “We ought to try.”

“Why?”

“I want to know what Father feared,” he said. “I want to know what _Gwyndolin_ fears. They’re guarding it just as closely as Father did. Even moreso.”

“I did think it odd that the painting guardians were not deemed guardians enough for Gwyndolin.”

“See?” Anar smiled. “You _should_ scheme with the rest of us.” He pressed his hand to the canvas, the strange coolness a balm against the warmth of Anor Londo, even in the darkness of night, but before he could summon anything forth, she pulled him back.

“We would do best to leave this painting to itself,” Gwynevere insisted, her hand hot on his shoulder. “Besides, whatever’s in there… Whatever it is that they fear so much…It’s not going to fix anything. It’ll just make everything worse.”

“Killer of joy and spoiler of hunts, you are. What are you doing here anyway? Can’t a man be left alone in the halls of his past in peace?”

Gwynevere laughed and said, “No. Never that, and never _you_. I simply couldn’t bear the thought of Father as he is now, alone in that little room, so I thought to walk to get my mind off of it. I could not sleep.”

“Hm.”

He took his hand away, and just then he felt it pull back, like the air itself wanted him to touch the painting’s surface. It felt like the gates of New Londo.

“Do you truly hate him? Do you feel nothing for your father?”

Anar ignored her questions, because his father had not felt enough for him, not enough to keep him around, and the pull of the painting on his hand as he moved it away occupied his thoughts more and more with every second. “Gwynevere—”

“Just answer me honestly, Anar. You can do that, can’t you?”

“No, Gwynevere; look.” The pull was stronger, it seemed to want him, somehow, to do something. He could not think of what to do. The storm picked at his skin, pulling it in two ways. He felt as though the ice in the painting was calling him forward—

“Anar! Listen to me! You’ve never _listened_.”

“No! _You_ listen to me, for once in your life; put your hand here.”

She stared at him sullenly, her face dark with that familiar irritation. She was so stubborn, so irritating; but he knew, somehow, that whatever this was, he wanted her to know about it too. His smile was hard to beat down when she came to stand beside him, still angry, and placed her hand on the painting. Her dark scowl slipped away into surprise, and he looked at her with what he knew was pure, smug pride. “See?”

She frowned again. “What is this joy on your face, Brother? Are you surprised that the enchanted painting is enchanted?”

“Pull your hand away,” he smirked. She did so, and the surprise became horror. “ _See?”_ He gestured at the painting with more emphasis. He took his own hand back from the surface of the painted world, noting that the pull had become stronger, “It’s drawing us in.”

“Yes. Well, I do not answer to paintings. I’m going to bed.”

“And what will you do then, Sister? Think about Father’s lifeless husk? Toss about, restless, for the entire night? Let’s find what Father feared so much he trapped it in here instead,” he laughed, hiding how serious he was in a smile, like he might have taunted her into joining him in raiding the kitchens a lifetime ago, on those nights they were both sent to bed without food.

As punishment reserved for raiding the kitchens, of course. 

She stood before him, her hand still on the painting’s canvas, that look of resentment giving way to something deeper, more vulnerable. Something more and truly familiar.

He pushed a little further, picking away at an old wound. “Let’s see what Gwyndolin fears so much, when it’s just you and them, all alone in this place.”

“All right,” she said finally, that familiar, beloved curiosity winning against her pride. “Very well. But you will be protecting me with your life.”

“Always,” he promised, and he took her hand in his and began to summon the storm to the surface of his skin, pulling the seal about the painting in alongside the strength he put out, another ring, a cycle, with him at the center and Gwynevere at the helm, and they passed through the painting like it was merely a doorway like any other.

He was becoming quite good at this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's been 5 months, hasn't it? that's what grad school + lockdown + *vague hand gestures* does to a lady. hope you enjoy.  
> I added a linguistic/lore explanation for my choice and use of names for the firstborn. I highly encourage any lore-lovers to research the connections between the silmarillion and dark souls!!! FOR THE LOVE OF LANGUAGE!!!


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

**The Painted World**

* * *

The canvas gave away like it he knew it would, and they passed through it with a feeling similar to passing through the gates in New Londo-- the sensation was the same, and so was the way he pulled them through. There was a strong layer of darkness that they passed through, something between the canvas and the space beneath it, and it only became stronger the further they pushed. 

“Someone’s been here,” he said. The scene before him was becoming more and more clear. It was rather strange, seeing the world in the painting come into being. For it was, despite all enchantments, a painting, and it needed time to remake itself in this new form. He watched a tree build itself into the air and take root as the rest of the forest behind it rose and covered them both in a cool shadow. He could see the same structure in the distance that he had seen on the canvas itself-- he could see the details setting in too, even at this distance.

“Yes, someone has been here,” Gwynevere agreed, her voice tight and her body clearly struggling to put out the heat it needed to fight the cold. He was used to the cold now, after so long in the mountains with the dragons, in storms and above the clouds, and so his own body adjusted quickly. “Father came here when he made it.”

“I do not think it was Father who made this.”

Gwynevere's shivers slowly came under control as her glow began to get stronger about her, and she spared him a look of doubt as her body warmed. “What do you mean? This is the painting he constructed after… Everything.”

Anar shook his head. “Father is a man of war. Or he was. He would paint something that smoldered, something that burned. This—”

Gwynevere reached out to touch a tree, her fingers reaching the bark as it etched itself into existence, too fast for a human to see but just enough for them to wonder at the craftmanship in every fiber. “I see what you are trying to say,” she conceded.

“This is beautiful," Anar continued. "Father was never very concerned with beauty.”

“I know what you’re thinking,” Gwynevere whispered, “but she’s really gone.”

“Yes, I know,” he said simply. "But the evidence I see does not care about that."

“So you are saying that you believe she built her own prison? I told you Father put all he feared into here-- she was the greatest among his fears.”

“I do not know if she knew what she built, or if _he_ did, for that matter. All I know is that the darkness here is like hers, and the painting is like her too. It is like Gwyndolin's too, and she taught them all they know of magic.”

The path began to appear before them as they spoke, a trail of snow beaten down and hardened enough to show the forest floor beneath a layer of ice. Anar took the first step forward, and Gwynevere fell into step behind him, and for a while the only sound was the sound of the snow and ice giving away beneath their bare feet.

“We make for the tower?”

“Where else?” There was a hissing sound as a strange creature retreated into the darkness just ahead, its head forming just as it hid in the shadows. Anar could not see what it would have been, but he caught sight of the dark wings, malformed and folded back against its sides. “Does that not look like Mother’s worse handiwork?” he asked.

“I do not know. I do not care to find out.” Gwynevere sped up and her veils came to brush against his back; he could feel them against his hands as he walked. “Perhaps we should leave this place.”

“Nonsense.” Anar snorted, although he had thought the same thing only a moment after he caught sight of the deformed being in the shadows. The longing to know, however, was so much stronger than the deep pit of dread that the creature had placed in his stomach. “We must go forward.”

“Why do we need to?”

“Don’t you want to feel like children again?” Anar teased, hiding the solemn truth behind his smile. “Is this not like our old adventures in the mountains? We used to hunt together, remember?”

Gwynevere smiled at him quietly, and she did not rise to his bait. It was a sad sort of smile, and it reminded him that she had burnt the curtains black after he left. With an uncomfortably guilty feeling, Anar turned his attention to the landscape. "We can only access the path to the tower if we take this bridge forward across the chasm. But it is broken," he noted aloud, which made Gwynevere hit him again. It was a welcome relief from the uncomfortable, sad warmth in her smile.

“Obviously it is broken,” she said, as familiar and rude as she always should be. “We have no choice now but to turn back.”

“No,” Anar insisted. “If there is a chance that Gwyndolin has been here too, then they would not come here and stand at the bridge to stare at a tower. They would not waste Ornstein on guarding this painting, no matter who they paired him with-- Ornsteins' too valuable to be wasted, no matter how they might want to punish him for his loyalty to me." Anar shook his head. "No; there’s a kind of secret here. Mother's sort of magic is always secrets and layers, and Gwyndolin never does anything without a reason.”

“You mentioned before that the magic here felt like Mother's, and I will give you that, but do you mean to say that Gwyndolin had a hand in this? Or did you mean that Gwyndolin's magic reminds you of Mother's?”

“You did not notice the feeling of their magic all over the surface of the canvas?"

“No," Gwynevere said, "I only sensed Mother’s magic; I thought you did too."

"Gwyndolin has gotten all their talents from Mother. Certainly not from Father; it is either Mother, or it is Gwyndolin mimicking mother, or it is both."

Gwynevere looked out at the broken bridge for a long, silent moment. “A fair point, and a fair set of options. But then one of those options implies that Gwyndolin had something to do with the very creation of this world, which I find unlikely."

Anar noticed that she said this very emotionlessly, which meant that she was thinking about it with a great deal of care and taking just as much care to hide her emotions. "It is possible," he agreed. "Do you think they would be able to hide such a thing from you?"

Gwynevere did not answer for a while, but after a long moment in which they both regarded the bridge with some suspicion, she said, "Gwyndolin cannot have guarded it too closely to warrant such suspicion from you; it was not under any sort of guard just now, not besides those usual sentries and guardians.”

"They knew I would notice if they placed guards about it that were not the painting guardians,” Anar said. “I only know they guarded it so heavily before because of Ornstein. He would not lie to me.” He did not say, _so you you see, it is in Ornstein that I have placed my faith and trust_ , but he knew he might as well have.

And so Anar said this and stepped out onto the broken, empty space of the bridge. Gwynevere yelped in a very undignified way and reached out to grab him. But she did not need to, for his feet remained solidly on the bridge, somehow. “Gwyndolin’s clever.” He laughed as Gwynevere swore and clutched at him more tightly.

“Oh, _never_ do that to me again,” Gwynevere snapped, and she stepped onto the bridge too. It held, of course, and they continued forward until the tower became a much more looming sort of beast over their heads. Gwynevere pushed him ahead when he spent too long staring up at it, wondering at how someone could have imbued every inch of it with darkness and foreboding. “Go," she snapped, shaking him out of his thoughts. "You wanted to be here so badly, so you can go first.”

“When I asked, Gwyndolin told me it was not what I thought. Imagine _this_ not being what I think it is.”

“They would tell me if there was something so dangerous in this painting. I’m sure they would.” Gwynevere sounded more and more sure as she spoke, but she had not started off so certain-- and Anar noticed. It was a crack in the armor, and he could see blood through it.

“Did Gwyndolin tell you about Father right away? I didn’t think to ask.”

Gwynevere looked at him for a long moment, and then her eyes slid away. “They were trying to protect me.”

“Do not bother to hide that seed of resentment from me; I’m well familiar with it.”

The broken bridge did not waver beneath them, and when they crossed it, it did not disappear behind them. Thus assured of a way back, they approached the rotting, icy fortress ahead and noted every beast and creature and oddly-shaped thing's flight into the shadows as they climbed the steps up into the tower.

The frigid cold was clear in the air and in the ice around them, but it did not touch them at all the way it had at first in the painted forest. It did not affect them in the slightest until they reached the top, where the air was worse and the wind was like a knife. And there, amid all the storm and ice at the top of the strange, rotting tower, a strange woman stood. She was larger than any human, and only slightly larger than perhaps Filianore, who was the smallest of them.

Gwynevere stepped forward when Anar made no move to try, and she came to stand before the strange creature. Anar could see the scales on her face and neck, and—yes, that was a tail. Her hair, as white as the snow around them, barely moved in the breeze. It was clear that she was a being of power, and an idea of who she was began to form in Anar's mind. The sensation of Gwyndolin's magic and Gwyndolin's careful protection of the painting would make sense, if she were who he thought she might be.

“There are others,” was all he could manage to say aloud. Gwynevere passed her hand in front of the girl’s face, but it seemed as though she was not fully present with them. She looked at them, but no expression of recognition otherwise passed over her face. She reacted not at all to Gwynevere's hands, nor to the sound of their voices. She simply stood, vacant, and occasionally sighed and breathed out a fog of warm air that lingered in the space between her and Gwynevere. 

“What do you mean?”

Anar ignored her, moving to stand beside her in front of the half-breed—for that was what she was; it was clearer and clearer with every passing moment.

“Are you one of our own?” he asked her.

The woman blinked as though she were waking up and met his eyes. Her face turned up towards him, and then a look of horror came over her.

“Thou,” she said, trembling, “are not Gwyndolin.”

“It’s _art not_ ,” Gwynevere muttered. Anar shot her a look. “What? The accent is strange, but grammar remains grammar. Where are you from?” The last she asked in a louder voice, directed at the young creature before them.

“I…”

Anar pushed Gwynevere aside. “You mentioned Gwyndolin? Gwyndolin comes here?”

“Gwyndolin comes to see me… Yes…”

“When was the last time Gwyndolin was here?”

“She was here—”

“She?” Gwynevere interrupted.

The girl looked confused. “Why, yes.”

Gwynevere looked at Anar with some concern, then back to the girl. “What do they talk about when they are here with you?”

“Oh,” the girl, for she seemed more and more now to be a girl and not a woman, hummed. She thought for a moment and then nodded as though she had come across the fact of the matter and could now confidently relay it. “She comes to me to keep me happy.”

“Wouldn’t you be happier… somewhere else?”

“Yes,” the girl sighed. “But it is dangerous elsewhere. That is why I came here. Gwyndolin tried to give me her ring, so that I might be a human, or like her—but it did not work.”

“I see.” Gwynevere looked at Anar with a gaze like fire. “The ring you say?” She stared at him as if to say: “ _do something.”_ But Anar could not think of what to do. The goddess ring was for ceremonial purposes mostly, and Gwyndolin guarded it fiercely and removed it only around-- Anar could not help but smile fondly-- Gwyndolin only ever removed it around _them_. 

“We’ll find you a better ring,” he said. Gwynevere hit him. “Why did you hit me?”

“Excuse us,” Gwynevere said in a sweet voice. “Do you mind if we visit you again tomorrow?”

“Not at all,” the girl said. “If Gwyndolin allows it, of course. I am at her service.”

“Oh, Gwyndolin has allowed it.” Gwynevere crossed her arms. “Don’t you worry.”

“But don’t tell them we were here if they come by," Anar said anyway, unconvinced by Gwynevere’s show of bravado. “Under no circumstance should you tell them—”

“I’m shocked,” came Gwyndolin’s voice, interrupting him and sending them all into a stunned silence.

Anar recovered first, rolling his eyes and fixing an aloof expression upon his face as he turned to face his younger sibling. “Are you shocked we’d be here or shocked that we’d get this far?”

“Goddess, is there a difference?” Gwyndolin looked at them with obvious animosity, though their cowl was in place and their ring was solidly on their finger. They hadn’t had that mask on since the first time Anar saw them, back in the tomb. It made them feel a little far away. Like talking to a painting, perhaps, and it reminded him of how cruel and cold Gwyndolin had been at first. They had softened later, a little, but now it seemed like that had been a ploy, or a game.

“Blasphemy, little one?”

“You started it,” Gwyndolin muttered. They slipped the ring off, and their hair fell to its usual length about their chest and shoulders and their voice went back to that brittle irritated tone, and gone was the perfect goddess. “So, now you know.”

“Actually,” Anar lied. “I have gleaned nothing from this. I have only discovered that you are hiding a girl in a painting, but I have only the barest theory as to why that is.”

“Do not play dumb. What is your theory?”

“She’s not yours, is she?”

“No! I said not to play dumb! How could she be? Don’t you think you would have noticed if—Fine, I see. No, she’s not. She might be Mother’s.”

“Oh?" Anar frowned. "That seems a little unlikely right? She would have been pressed for time as it stood.”

Gwyndolin began to say something, but Gwynevere interrupted. “She’s our sister?” Her voice was tight with some unnamable emotion. The girl, throughout all this, had been watching them quietly. But at the mention of this last thing, she seemed to come alive. The light in her face was almost hard to look at directly. In that moment, she looked—she looked almost like Gwyndolin, he thought. She turned the full force of her smile on Gwynevere, who visibly melted and took her hand.

“She looks like you did,” Gwynevere said quietly, “when you were little.”

“Back when I had scales? Yes.”

“Does… I mean…” Anar trailed off, unsure of how to ask.

“You can ask. Or actually please do not ask. Let us not linger on it too long. But it’s probably true. She’s probably my full sister, and only half yours.”

Anar and Gwynevere stood in silence, quietly accepting this. It was something they had all guessed, of course, but it had never mattered before. It had never mattered before, but now, suddenly, it lay over them like a shadow.

Gwyndolin was this girl's sibling. In full blood. And only half theirs. Gwynevere looked worried when she glanced at Anar, unable to keep her emotions off her face. Anar could only smile weakly. “I see,” he said finally. It was less than any of them wanted to say, but it filled the silence.

“Shall we return? Priscilla, I am sorry to cut our time short, but I will be back tomorrow.”

“Do not worry!” Priscilla-- and if that was her name then it somehow suited her well-- seemed to glow again where her beam had faded before. “I will wait for thee, sister!”

“Uh,” Gwyndolin looked at Gwynevere and Anar with some embarrassment, “we have not covered the complexities of some things yet.”

Anar laughed. “So, you show up in crown, cowl, and golden raiment to visit your _sister_? Isn’t that overdoing it?” Gwyndolin glared at him and opened their mouth to reply but seemed to think better of it. They pressed their lips tightly together, those masks falling into place like a maw snapping shut.

“Well, Priscilla! Until tomorrow,” Gwynevere said, and grabbed Anar’s hand. Her grip was like iron, and she pulled them both down the steps towards the bottom of the tower. “We are coming back tomorrow,” she said, when they were far enough away from the top. Gwyndolin pulled their hand from her grip and ran forward to block their way.

“You couldn’t have just left this alone?” Gwyndolin snapped, their façade of calm falling fast now that they were alone together. “You couldn’t just _trust_ me?”

There was something tight to their jaw, something restrained. More masks, Anar knew. He was sick to death of the masks his sibling wore, and something about hearing them call a stranger their _sister_ made him angrier than he had been, even before.

“You said it wasn’t what it looked like,” he said.

“And it wasn’t, was it?”

“What did you think I would think when you said that?”

Gwyndolin screeched, dislodging snow from the cliffside, “THAT IT WAS NOT WHAT IT LOOKED LIKE!”

“All right,” Gwynevere snapped, dragging them now past the great cliffside and to the bridge. “I think it’s clear there are some obvious problems here, and I’m not nearly ready to talk them out now. Let’s focus on getting back to the cathedral. Mine, by the way. I feel I should mention that.”

“Oh, please,” Gwyndolin said, a rather unhinged snarl on their face, turning for the first time on their sister. “You weren’t using it.”

“So, you moved Mother’s cursed painting in? And an illegitimate daughter too?”

“I’m illegitimate.”

“We do not know that.”

“We do, actually,” Anar said. He looked at Gwyndolin, regretting it immediately, but not enough to be less angry. “And we still love you just the same; we are angry for an unrelated reason.”

“Considering the circumstances, I’m more legitimate than you!” But then Gwyndolin paused, realizing what Anar had actually said. “Thank you,” they said awkwardly, looking oddly like they had been hit over the head with something.

“But I’m still angry at you,” Anar said, crossing his arms. He wanted to say more, but he stopped himself at the last moment. Gwyndolin was shaking. Their expression was, as usual, unreadable and hidden from view. But their mouth was twisted oddly, like they were grimacing in pain. He looked away from it, feeling uncomfortable, but then Gwyndolin said something very unusual, something he had never imagined they had ever _thought._

“I thought you hated me, Anar,” they said in a voice more brittle than ever, and he had to look at them. They removed their cowl, and they did not do it smoothly. Their hair was ruined, and their face was twisted into a truly vicious grimace.

Anar could barely get the word out. “What?”

“You are always so angry with me now. And you were so happy to see Filianore.”

“I’m angry with you because you’re insufferable. And you tied me up and threatened to destroy my mortal soul before you did anything else. And you became the Dark Sun and ran the kingdom as soon as I was exiled. But I still love you.”

“You don’t—” Gwyndolin swallowed harshly, and Anar could hear the tell-tale signs that Gwynevere was fretting, in agonies, just behind them. “You don’t hate me for letting him—?”

“I… I was angry. But I did not hate you. It would have been dangerous for you to stop him.”

“How angry were you?”

“Gwyndolin. Why does that matter?”

“I just feel—” Gwyndolin stopped again, swallowed, again, and looked away. Anar could see their lips contorting to hold back emotion. “I feel as though I cannot fix what happened, like I cannot stand beside you as I once did.”

“Where’s Gwynevere’s speech? She’s just as guilty as you, if you look at it that way.” He looked over at Gwynevere to see if she would support him in this attempt at levity, but she was crying. The tears seemed unsure if they should burn or freeze, so they stood in place below her eyes and puddled in the air. It looked awful.

“Really?” he sighed, exasperated and fond. He pulled her in under his arm.

“We haven’t really had a chance to talk properly,” she said, brushing away the tears violently, obviously embarrassed to be crying. They clicked as they fell into the snow around them. “I’m just not angry the way I was before. So it’s harder not to cry.”

“You did cry, before,” he reminded her. “Shall we?” And they stepped through the strange, drawn place where the painting began. The hall on the other side was empty, and the night was still heavy in the golden city.

Gwyndolin wiped their eyes, which were red-rimmed and tired, and tucked the cowl under their arm. “I am sorry I called you illegitimate.”

“It’s fine. I’m disowned.”

“It was wrong. You possess a Lord’s Soul, same as I do.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t.”

Gwynevere froze. “What?”

“I don’t.”

There was a rush of air as Gwynevere spun him around. “What do you mean?” she asked, in a measured way that was always her last attempt at calm before rage, though it matched not at all with her actions. “What do you mean?” she repeated, her calm fraying as she stared into his eyes. He sensed, for the first time, her desperation. It was that tension under the surface, that stiffness she carried; it was pure chaos.

“I will have the shard he must have left me, wherever it is now. I suppose that’s something.”

Gwyndolin’s eyes betrayed nothing, but he knew them well enough to know that they were rearranging the pieces and the parts they had previously been given, that they were looking for the answer to a puzzle that their father had intended and left unfinished. So that they might finish it.

"So," Gwynevere said quietly, "either you use the shard he left you, or you--"

“Yes.” He did not say more than that, because there was the question of the flame, and he knew they all thought it. It was what he had been saying from the very beginning.

“We’d best give you the soul as soon as possible, then,” Gwyndolin said with a grim look.

They said nothing for a long time, but Anar could see in their face that they were deep in thought. Whatever it was they had read into this knowledge; they were probably already thinking of ways to use it.

The cathedral was cold around them as they stood before the silent painting-- Gwyndolin really had emptied the city and the palace itself in advance of his arrival. Finally, a moment of calm to speak, to understand one another, and this was what had come of it. Anar almost thought it was funny.

Gwynevere let go of him slowly, her hands still up as she stepped away. She pressed them together, as though she were cold, and then put them around herself. “There must be something else—”

“There is nothing,” he said, and it was then that he realized that only he could discover what his father had truly intended for him, for them too. He spared the painting a last glance, wishing the lost girl within better luck than he had in this life. “Let us sleep now. Tomorrow, we can discuss everything properly. With Filianore there.”

Gwyndolin turned the golden cowl about in their hands and looked at it for a long moment. “All right,” they said. “I’m sorry.”

“Do not be. I do not regret anything.”

Gwynevere touched his arm lightly and then leaned against him. It was not a hug, but it was something she had not done since they were children. A little nod, a nudge, after a fight or a punishment. “Do you wish to see what we did with your old quarters?” she asked.

Gwyndolin brushed their hands over their eyes once more and smiled weakly. “She had it turned into an archive.”

“Oh, that’s not so terrible—”

“An archive of portraits of herself that she had commissioned.”

At his look of disgust, Gwynevere only laughed.

They did not speak a word about what transpired, about what Anar had revealed to them about his soul, and Anar did not press what he might have held over their heads only a day ago.

That his father had most certainly left him a shard of his own soul as a final, unavoidable edict.

_Burn with this, or hollow without it._

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE ON NAMES.  
> The word Anor is taken directly from Sindarin (the form of elvish commonly spoken in Middle earth), and it is what Tolkien calls the sun in that fictional language. In Quenya, the form of elvish spoken in Valinor, the sun is called ANAR!!!
> 
> There are a lot of connections between dark souls and the silmarillion, i'm obsessed, but on to the point:  
> The sun, in Tolkien's mythos, is a fruit. Taken from a tree, just like the moon, the fruit was called Anar. It became Anor, the sun, as it took on the role in the heavens of a celestial body to those in Middle Earth.
> 
> Sen comes off to me like a title, the kind of name given to a prince for an accomplishment, and since he's a god of war, I assume he had something to do with Sen's Fortress. Anar, a play on words and on etymological origin, is the name he has given himself anew. It was likely the name his mother gave him, and which stopped being used when she...  
> Well, his mother is Velka. u 3u)/ enjoy the lore


End file.
